


Anything That Brings You Back

by isnt (noneedforhystereks)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Allison Argent, Allison-centric, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Purgatory, F/F, Rare Pairings, Shapeshifter Allison, Temporary Character Death, meta af, my love letter to allison argent
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-05
Updated: 2016-11-08
Packaged: 2018-04-13 04:34:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 24,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4507932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noneedforhystereks/pseuds/isnt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My love letter to Allison Argent: a canon divergence AU. Because you cannot look me in the eyebrows and tell me her ending was satisfying or fair- in any way, shape, or form.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. a ghost, a shadow at the most

There’s a dull, throbbing pain in her chest: every breath draws it deeper into her body until the throbbing pounds in her ears. Pulsing and thumping, it pulses in her eardrums. It’s that echoing pulse that makes her realize she can’t hear her heartbeat. She doesn’t have time to panic when the rustling of the wind through trees has her snapping to attention. She wasn’t anywhere near the preserve when she—

She died.

She doesn’t exactly remember how, but she remembers Scott. She remembers Lydia screaming and her father…her father was coming for her. Rolling onto her side takes more effort than it should and she fully expects to see blood on her shirt when she looks down. There’s no gaping hole in her chest, just bare skin. She doesn’t know why she expects it, but just like she knows where to find callouses on her fingers—she knows there should be a lot of blood and she should be in a lot more pain. She’s naked, barefoot, and completely without weapons. Glancing around the ground doesn’t reveal anything other than grey dirt and some patches of soft, yellow-green lichen. She gives up on the prospect of finding any clothing and takes stock of her surroundings, mostly trees and the trickling sounds of water. She must be in the northernmost part of the preserve, closest to the mountains and nearest water source.

She’s anticipating more pain when she moves, but there’s only a bone-deep soreness: a pervading sense of almost-hurt that feels more like an echo under her ribs; like ripples in a pond, extending outwards through her body. A hoarse grunt breaks off into a rough breath and then she finally manages to get to her knees, pushing up onto her elbows. She’s panting with the effort, but at least she’s breathing deeply now. Deep, controlled breaths: breathe in, out, repeat. The expansion of her lungs is enough to distract her from the noticeable silence of her heart. She feels lonely, empty without its beating. Shelter, she thinks. She has to get out of the open, find supplies and maybe a weapon or two.

“You’re human,” she hears from behind her, the accusation cautious. Knowing.

She’s on her feet and crouched defensively, fingers instinctually reaching toward a boot-knife before she remembers she doesn’t have anything on her. She swears, straightens out and lifts her chin to take in the woman that had spoken to her. Hidden in the shadows, she can’t quite make her out entirely. There’s straight, dark hair framing her face and the moon illuminates bare shoulders. Naked, too, she guesses. Shifting her stance, more of the woman’s face comes into view. The strong brows and angular cheekbones are striking; there’s a familiarity in the way she moves, her body tensed and strong. Tilting her head, the woman narrows her eyes and inhales deeply—scenting. Her eyes flash a bright, amber-gold.

“You’re a werewolf,” she answers in return.

The wolf smiles, teeth sharp in her mouth, and then she realizes why the woman looks so familiar.

“You’re a Hale,” she says, quiet and flat. “Laura?”

The wolf’s smile disappears, a blank expression taking its place. She moves closer, slowly and with an eerie kind of grace. Slipping from the shadows uncovers the rest of her body, splattered with mud and forest debris. The wildness in her limbs is aching to free itself from Laura’s careful control, if the stiffness in her movements is any indication. She moves like a coiled spring, circling around to stand before her.

“You know me, then. But I don’t know you,” Laura asks when she’s maybe a foot away. “And I don’t like being at a disadvantage.”

“Allison. Allison Argent,” she says and swallows a dry gulp, hand twitching by her side.

There’s a second or two of stillness, and then Allison is knocked flat on her back. She’s anticipating Laura’s reaction but she can’t fight the way her vision blurs, then darkens. The last thing she sees before everything around her fades to black is the glowing of Laura Hale’s eyes.  
\---

When Allison wakes for the second time, it’s with less soreness in her limbs and warmth on her skin. Rubbing at the grittiness of her eyes, she’s surprised to find her arms are free. Then again, there’s probably not a large supply of rope. Looking up, she sees smooth stone walls and a dirt floor; a small cave, dark and damp. The darkness and muffled sound of the wind tells Allison they’re fairly deep inside a cavern.

“You’re up,” comes Laura’s voice, quiet but still threatening.

Allison grunts and manages to sit up, bringing her knees up to her chest. She’s not particularly modest, but it’s not the idea of her nakedness that makes her want to curl into herself. It’s the thought of being vulnerable and defenseless: soft in the face of a predator. It’s not in her to feel shame or weakness of will, but Allison has seen what predators do to prey.

“Brought me to your den?” she asks while trying to keep her voice flat. Allison’s instinct is to try and calm her heartbeat, before she remembers she doesn’t have one. The resounding silence of her chest startles her, makes her palms sweat.

Laura hums and her lips twitch, like she’s trying to hide a grin. She’s been careful to position herself between Allison and, what Allison assumes is, the entrance. She tracks her every movement, although her eyes stay a human shade of hazel. Allison glances down, unable to meet the seemingly familiar gaze.

“Allison, right? I never met you,” Laura appraises her. “You look…what, sixteen?”

“Seventeen,” she corrects briskly. “I’m—I was seventeen.”

Two months from eighteen, she thinks. She died a child.

Laura raises an eyebrow and seems taken aback, but she scowls when she speaks. “They bring ‘em into it a bit young now, don’t they?”

“My dad was training me but only because I asked him to,” Allison says. “I was the Argent matriarch before I died.”

“And Evelyn Argent was okay with that? The only thing she held onto tighter than the Argent mantle, was her flask,” Laura jokes.

“My grandmother passed it down to my mother,” Allison explains. “My mom died and my Aunt Kate is a psychopath. No one else was right for the job.”

Laura is quiet, contemplative in the dark. Her tone is dubious, borderline dismissive, when she speaks, “And you were?”

Allison seethes. She was young, but she did the best she could with what she was given. Handfuls of ash and silver, a mouthful of apologies: she did alright, all considering. There are millions of things Allison could spit at her. Family stories and memories, things passed on from her grandmother and her mother—even from Kate. A heritage and birthright only the Argent name could gift her, but it’s pointless. The Argent name means little to Laura Hale.

“I had a new code, you know,” Allison spits. She’s angry, but she feels like this needs to be said. She feels like she owes Laura this much: assurance that the Argent left with her brother would do right by her.

“Nous chassons ceux qui nous chassent?” Laura mocks. “Nous tuons ceux qui veulent nous tuer?”

“Nous protegeons ceux qui ne peuvent,” Allison defends. “I figured it best to take the killing out of the code altogether.”

“The killing out of the code?” Laura almost laughs and her smile is not a nice one. “New code or not, you’re all built the same way and you all do the same job. At least before, Argents were just more honest about it.”

“I’m sorry, okay?” Allison yells. “I can’t help my family’s history any more than you can help yours.”

Laura sighs, drops her head back to stare at the ceiling. She shrugs and grins at Allison.

“We’re both dead anyway, right?”

Allison almost does smile back at her then, small and sad.

“Surreal isn’t it, being here? I alpha-shifted when I first got here; didn’t shift back for…a while. Now, I couldn’t even shift all the way if I wanted to. Time runs a little differently here.”

“Where is here? The preserve?” Allison asks, glad for the change in subject. She knows it’s not really the preserve, wherever here is. It feels too dream-like: her limbs still sleep-heavy and the silence around her far too heavy for the woods. She knows she’s supposed to be gone, but no one’s ever really been gone. There’s always somewhere to disappear to.

Laura’s eyebrows pull down, mouth tightening as she stares.

“The In-Between? The Cold Sleep? The Middle Space?” she says, seemingly perplexed that Allison doesn’t seem to know. “You’re in purgatory.”

Allison knows about purgatory, in theory. She had distant cousins that were devoutly Catholic; she’s seen it archives and in various family tomes. But when faced with the actuality, the concept seems much more difficult to swallow.

“What? But, why? Isn’t it supposed to be for—,” she gulps. “I’m human.”

“In theory, purgatory isn’t the place of cleansing in theology or the island of supernatural misfit toys I’m sure the Argent bestiary is quick to preach,” Laura explains, tone sharp and unsparing. “In reality, purgatory is more like a bus stop: the inhuman are sent here when they die until they either fade away or move on.”

Allison nods, letting the information sink in. It makes sense, in a morbidly interesting kind of way. But the question still remains: “Why am I here?”

Laura scoffs. “The inhuman doesn’t strictly apply to everything that goes bump in the night,” she says, her fangs sharpening further and her eyes glowing amber. Allison raises an eyebrow, unimpressed. Laura rolls her eyes; she looks so much like Derek in that moment, smile arrogant and hazel eyes defiant. Allison’s smile drops off her face. What he wouldn’t give to be in her place and see Laura.

“It’s not strictly the body you’re born into or the ‘purity’ of your soul. It’s somewhere in between. I’ve seen humans do monstrous things, Argent,” Laura sneers. “Maybe your soul isn’t as human as you thought.”

The thought slams into Allison, has her gasping sharply and eyes burning. The phantom steely burn of ice water trickles down her spine.

Maybe your soul isn’t as human as you thought.

“What about…Druid magic?” Allison’s voice is barely above a whisper. “What if there was a darkness? Around my heart or soul. Whatever. Would that do it? Would that send me here?”

Laura shifts in her crouch, tilting her head. She thinks on Allison’s words for a few minutes, during which Allison’s anxiety climbs. A small eternity passes before Laura looks like she’s even going to answer her and then she pauses, reconsiders. Allison wants to wring the answers out of her, but Laura’s claws and fangs don’t seem to be going away any time soon.

“What do you know?” Allison demands. “Tell me. I know you know something.”

Laura purses her lips before dropping to sit on the cave floor, frowning. She looks up at Allison and the uncertainty in her gaze is…unsettling.

“You’re an Argent. You’re supposed to be on top of your shit by now, O Matriarch of Murder,” Laura snarks. The sarcasm puts her at ease and Allison wonders what that says about her group of friends; Stiles would have loved Laura. “What do you know about the separation of man and beast?”

Allison frowns. “Like, anatomically? Or like—”

“What defines the line between, say, a human and a shifter?” Laura clarifies. “Any kind of shifter. What exactly puts someone on your family’s ‘To Kill’ list?”

“Loss of control? Someone who can’t suppress their primal urges with their humanity,” Allison responds without hesitation. “An animal.”

Laura nods, eyes narrowing as she shifts to reach the floor. Her fingertips are shifted into long, brown-tipped claws that Laura uses to draw into the packed dirt. She leans back and points to the two curved arrows, tails meeting heads in a circular path. 

“Shifter and human, two interconnected halves of a whole. There’s almost no separation between the two entities,” Laura explains, gesturing towards the arrows. “But sometimes, there are…things—blockages—that come between the human and the animal.”

She draws a line halfway between the circle, creating partial top and bottom halves.

“Sometimes these things are organic: bloodlines, genetic mutations—”

“A lunar eclipse?” Allison guesses.

Laura scowls, but nods. “All organic: natural. There are different levels of permanence and not all things interfere with the shift to the same extent. But for the most part, the organic blocks are more temporary. Incomplete.”

She continues the line in the dirt, completely halving the circle.

“On the other hand, you have the inorganic. Sometimes, these blockages are a little more…human-based. Memory loss. Bloodthirst. Magic. A disruption of the balance.”

The last example is pointed; Laura’s voice emphasizes its significance.

“They’re permanent,” Allison guesses. “More complete.”

Laura nods again, looking begrudgingly impressed.

“But what does this have to do with me?” Allison asks. “I’m not a shifter; I’m human.”

“You wouldn’t be here if you were human, kid. You’re not,” Laura replies quietly. “Not completely, not anymore.”

“How do you know all this?”

Laura’s mouth curls into a tight, unhappy smile. She gazes at the wall of the cave above Allison’s shoulder and her face is tight, with pain or the effort of remembering half-faded memories.

“Maybe another time,” she says, subdued. Clearly, this is enough conversation for tonight.

Which is ridiculous. Allison has seen her friends brutalized by Japanese spirits, been killed by said Japanese spirits, and wound up in purgatory: she needs answers. Frustrated and desperate, Allison moves to argue but Laura holds up her hand.

“Listen, I don’t know you from Eve; I know your last name and I know you’ve somehow found a way to damn your spirit to purgatory. We’re not exactly going to have sleepovers and trade secrets by the campfire.”

“Laura, I need to know whatever it is you know,” she demands. “I’m not someone you can toy with.”

Dusting off her knees, Laura gets up and moves further down the cavern until she disappears from Allison’s view.

“We’ll talk more after you’ve gotten some rest,” she says. “Get some sleep while you can.”

It doesn’t make any more sense than anything else Laura’s already told her. Her voice echoes and Allison fists her fingers into the dirt, wishing for once she had had claws.  
\---

The next morning, Allison blinks awake after catching a few hours of sleep. Rolling onto her side, she scans the cave in the grey glow of dusk. Laura is nowhere to be found. Allison stretches as she gets up and walks out, looking for something to do. The sky looks exactly the same as when she woke up in purgatory, a strange green-grey, and it doesn’t resemble any morning-sky she’s ever seen. Rustling from the rear trees snaps her into attention and she crouches into a defensive position, although she’s not sure how much damage she can do while dead and weaponless.

Laura steps out of the treeline.

“Morning, Argent,” she greets. “Sleep any?”

Allison nods, glancing behind Laura and into the trees. There’s no way to judge its depths, try as she might. The dense pine and oak trees give way to fuzzy darkness, shapelessly looming deep in the preserve’s core.

“Catch it now, while you can,” Laura intones. “That’s the first thing to go.”

“Sleep?” Allison asks, startled.

Laura nods, “After about a week, you pretty much acclimate to…whatever state this is. The body you’re wearing stops needing sleep and you can function without it. But the more sleep you get in the beginning, the easier the transition. After a while, you lose track of time; everything’s a blur after that.”

“Transition to what? I’m already dead,” Allison snaps.

Laura glances back at her and frowns, her dark hair slipping over her shoulder to hide part of her face.

“I’m sorry if I was a little rough last night,” she says quietly. “It’s been a while since I’ve had to speak to anyone, let alone be civil.”

Allison nods and sits on a flat stone toeing the dirt at her feet. She gets it, she does. But she’s still feeling a little bitter and maybe, she thinks, she deserves it. Laura’s been here for a couple of years, without any sense of time or any companionship. The thought makes Allison wince.

“Make it up to me by telling me how you know so much about purgatory and magic,” Allison responds. It may be manipulative, but Allison will be damned if she doesn’t figure out how she ended up here. “I need to figure this out.”

Laura crouches across from her and draws spirals into the dirt as she speaks, “My girlfriend was training to be an emissary before…well, before. Her brother was our pack’s emissary; he would teach her, I would tag along. I was next in line for Alpha, by birthright as the oldest Hale child. My mom, our alpha, had been grooming me for the role since I was old enough to shift. She thought me and Marin were a good match, that we’d be the next generation of the Hale pack.”

Allison looks away from Laura, eyes burning with shame. Even here, in purgatory, it was impossible to escape the shame of her family’s past: her own future, in another universe somewhere. An entire legacy, destroyed by someone she’d loved. Allison thought she’d come to terms with it, but facing Laura feels like swallowing it down all over again. She thinks of her grandfather, her aunt, maybe a hunter she’d known swinging a sword to halve Laura. How someone she must have known had placed the pieces of her body to taunt Derek. She’d come so close to becoming another Kate, herself, and she knew there was blood on her own hands. Allison misses father so badly, in that moment, her stomach clenches with the thought. She misses Scott. It’s the thought of him that has her mind reeling, the pieces of Laura’s story finally clicking in her head.

“Ms. Morrell?” she blurts, wiping away the moisture from her eyes. “You dated Ms. Morrell?”

Laura does laugh at that. “I only called Marin that in the bedroom,” she leers, complete with an eyebrow wiggle. “And sometimes on Tuesdays.”

Allison and Laura both laugh, and Allison sees her in a new light. The woman in front of her isn’t a ghost or a corpse or a monster. In the grey light of dusk, Allison feels like Laura Hale is just as warm, alive, and human as she had always been.  
\---

Allison finds out Laura’s right about sleeping in purgatory. The first few days are hell. Lethargy eats away at her and she sweats away burning fevers when she sleeps, skin prickling and painfully sensitive. When she wakes, nausea chews away at her stomach and she vomits up inky, pitch black tar. Even Laura looks concerned, hesitantly rubbing at Allison’s back and holding back her hair. She hums some lullaby to her and runs gentle, claw-tipped fingernails down her arms until she drops fitfully into sleep. After six days, Allison’s body begins to feel lighter. After nine, her temperature drops. It takes two weeks for her to stop sleeping.

Allison wakes one morning and knows it’s all over. She doesn’t grow tired as the day wears thin; her body is constantly awake and buzzing with energy. The sky remains the same green-grey, similar to the ocean she thinks. Laura leads her to a creak so she can rinse off the acrid, sick taste inside her mouth and clinging to her skin. Bending down to cup water into her hands, Allison feels an icy chill creep down her spine when she sees her reflection for the first time in the glassy surface of a step pool. Once a peachy pink, her lips are now stained ash grey. She sucks in a mouthful of water and gargles it, scrubbing at her lips with her fingernails. She glances at herself again when she spits and her mouth remains a pearly stone color. Her teeth burn bright white, making her mouth look ghoulish in comparison.

“Not impressed with the new look?” Laura asks from somewhere behind her.

“What the fuck,” Allison breathes. “What—how—why do I look like this?”

Laura’s footsteps squelch into the mud as she walks up beside Allison. She steps into the stream and down into the cascading pools. When she turns to sit in a larger pool down the creek, she shrugs. Allison glares at her, feeling cheated and betrayed.

“You never told me this was happening,” she says.

“You were a little busy throwing up poisoned blood,” Laura says back.

Allison stills. “Do you think that’s what did this?”

Laura shrugs again. “I’ve only ever seen that when a shifter’s poisoned, usually monkshood or mistletoe. I have no idea why this happened to you; scared the shit out of me when I saw it.”

Allison remembers Laura’s face when she was sick, the concern and fear visible there. For once, she doesn’t feel at a disadvantage because she doesn’t know something. She and Laura are on the same page, here. It’s a small bit of relief and she’ll take what little of it she can get. She flops onto her back, settling into the silt of the creek bank.

Sprawled on the ground, she looks up at the sky and ponders the conversation she had with Laura before she got sick. She wants to say yesterday, but she knows it’s been something like weeks. Laura was right: there isn’t really time in the “forest” either. The sky is always grey and murky, with the same burbling sounds of running water trickling in from somewhere North of Laura’s cave. There are no animal sounds, either. The birds and small critters are noticeably absent, but Allison knows she’s not alone. It’s unnerving, how quiet it is. In the silence, all she can do is ponder the millions of questions she still has for Laura.

“Hey, Little Miss Murder,” Laura says, purposely waiting until Allison had been lost in thought. She pokes a clawed foot at Allison’s side. “Get up. There’s something I want to show you.”

Allison climbs to her feet, stretching her arms above her head. She tries to put the memory of her changed face behind her, despite how it makes her feel like a monster. Laura nods and turns, disappearing between the trees. Allison follows her, treading carefully behind and glad of the distraction.  
\---

The silence is heavier under the trees, almost like a physical presence. Laura walks, at a decidedly human pace, and Allison is immensely grateful. She can feel eyes on her, but she has yet to see anyone else. Laura hasn’t shifted past claws and eyes, but Allison knows there’s more hidden power curled within her. It’s remarkably comforting for once; never before has she been so grateful to be near a werewolf.

They walk for a long time. The trees thin and lose color as they go deeper into the forest. Even the silence has changed; stifling and cold near the cave, the quiet is almost painful in here. The air buzzes with it and Allison feels goose bumps rise to the top of her skin. Finally, they come to a stop in front of an enormous tree stump and Allison stumbles in shock.

“So you do know it,” Laura surmises. “I thought so.”

Allison’s stopped walking, her legs refusing to take her any further. Laura circles around the Nemeton, before coming to a halt on Allison’s left. They stand together, facing the clearing.

“There was a lot that happened here, back home,” Allison starts, voice as shaky as her legs. “Sacrifices. Murders. There was a lot of death because of this thing.”

Laura purses her lips and nods, as if she expects it. Her lack of surprise makes Allison grind her teeth, her jaw clenching. If this was something else Laura had known, had kept secret just to throw in her face at her best convenience, she was going to lose it.

“There was this woman who took our parents,” Allison spits. It’s all coming back to her now, Julia Bacari’s disfigured face clear in her mind though her eyes are closed. “Deaton said we could sacrifice ourselves in some kind of ritual. We had tethers, something to keep us—”

“Anchors,” Laura finishes, still studying the Nematon. “Tokens or people?”

Allison seethes, “People.”

“You say us. How many of you went under?”

Allison remembers, now, that Laura had known and studied under Deaton. She mistook Laura’s familiarity for apathy and it puts her a little more at ease.

“Three of us went under and we each had our own anchor,” Allison confirms. A thought strikes her, but she doesn’t know how much to reveal. They don’t fully trust each other yet, too much bad blood between their names. There’s still a chance this could be a ploy to find a weak spot or something worse; she can’t get a read on Laura, too overwhelmed with the influx of information. Glancing at Laura, she wipes her nose with the back of her hand and calms her breathing. Clinical. Cool. In control. “We were submerged in these tubs, filled with ice and water. There was mistletoe, too.”

Laura twitches, wrinkles her nose.

“When we came out the other side, I remember seeing a white room with bright, blinding lights,” Allison continues. “The Nematon was in the middle of the room and when we touched it, we were able to see where it was in the preserve.”

Laura nods again. “That’s some dangerous shit to pull, even for Alan. Did all of you come back?”

Allison hesitates, only for a moment, before she nods furiously. Laura notices anyway, regards her with something like pity.

“One of my friends…he was possessed. I don’t know how exactly it related to the ritual,” she manages to say. “Maybe it was the darkness or whatever that paved the way. We didn’t see it until later.”

“Demon?” Laura asks.

“Nogitsune,” Allison says haltingly. She doesn’t sound as hysterical as she feels, so she’ll count it as a win. “Could it have been a demon? Is that something that could have happened?”

“Oh, fuck me,” Laura breathes out heavily through her teeth and ignoring Allison completely. She rubs her face with her palms, inhales and exhales harshly for a few moments. “I mean, it makes sense but—goddamn. You guys are how old again?”

“Laura, demons.”

“Technically, no. But it’s not impossible. You’re what, twenty?” 

The raging hysteria dwindles down into a mild chill. Allison shifts on her feet, crosses her arms; she hasn’t felt like a child since she moved to Beacon Hills. “I was almost eighteen,” she says softly. “Scott was only…we were all in high school.”

Then the oddness of Laura’s reaction catches up to her.

“Wait, how does the Nogitsune make sense? You accepted it, like possession by a dark Japanese spirit was an obvious, run of the mill—”

“When Deaton put you guys under,” Laura interrupts, walking towards the Nematon. She motions for Allison to follow. “He, essentially, created a blockage through magic. Druids have the ability to separate energies, auras if you will. They can see them, manipulate them, or even destroy them. Depending on their level of skill and their, well, have you ever played Dungeons & Dragons?”

Allison comes to a halt and hopes her face truly conveys the magnitude of the ‘what the fuck?’ she’s thinking. Laura smirks and, upon reaching the stump, sits on the flat-faced surface. She draws her legs in and leans forward with her arms on her knees, thinking. Glancing down at her in the broken light of the clearing, Allison takes a moment to really look at her. The darkness of her features gives her face a severity, familiar in its striking beauty. But where Derek’s brows sit heavy and stark on his face, Laura looks…sharper. She’s tall, taller than Allison; maybe six feet, give or take a couple of inches. She walks with a power that comes from both tightly coiled strength and effortless grace. Allison glances down at Laura’s arms and notes the lean muscles and smooth skin. Laura is undeniably beautiful, but she sits in her body differently than Derek or even Cora do. The clearing of a throat startles her, Laura’s raised brow a clear indication of her amusement and Allison flushes at being caught out.

“If you’re done? Magical moral alignment. Think of it as a spectrum: there are Druids working solely for the good of the natural world, fairy godmothers aren’t actually too far from the truth; on the other end of the spectrum, are the not so lawful and good. The Celtic word for them, technically, is D—”

“Darach,” Allison doesn’t snarl at the word, but it’s a near thing.

Laura pauses, blinks at her.

“Are you serious? What the fuck—you know what? We’ll come back to that. Gods, anyway- yes. Darachs: chaotic, evil, selfish. In the middle, Druids tend to be more neutral. They’re tasked with the maintaining of a ‘balance’. In order to make up for Darachs and the Lawful Druids, they remain mostly impartial. A lot of times, they become cornerstones for communities of shifters, teachers, healers—”

“Emissaries?” Allison interrupts, mostly to see Laura’s reaction.

“Are you fucking—you’re in a pack. Of course you are, why not? Darachs, Nogitsunes, Nematons: might as well have hunter-inclusive werewolf packs, too. Gods above,” she takes a breath and rubs at the bridge of her nose with her forefinger and thumb. “The point is Druids are incredibly powerful wielders of magic and the elements. They are capable of doing what only the forces of nature can do, and in a more permanent and dangerous way: they can separate the human, from the inhuman.”

Allison considers this. Considers Stiles and Scott, post-Nematon. Considers herself, even.

“I get that, but what about us?” she asks, frustrated and anxious. There’s something to be said for Laura’s thorough knowledge of magic and Druids, she knows. Even the candidness with which Laura is offering up all this information is pretty impressive. But Allison is growing more restless in her skin with every minute of this conversation. “What did Stiles and I have that could be separated from our humanity, if we were human? What was the point?”

Laura leans back on the Nematon, eyebrows furrowed and eyes dark. Whatever it was, Allison was going to have to parse it out on her own.

“Our hearts stopped when went under, right?” she tries, a shot in the dark. Laura nods, motions for her to go on. “Okay. So we what, died?”

“Parts of you, yes. I’m guessing something major happened to all of you. This Stiles person: human, pre-ritual. What happened, after?” Laura doesn’t seem to know any more than Allison does, here anyway.

“Nogitsune,” Allison clarifies. “Scott was a werewolf, pre-ritual.”

“And post?”

Allison thinks on it, chewing at her lip. She comes to sit on the Nematon beside Laura. She doesn’t know what to expect, but under her skin it just feels like wood. Worn, rough, true, authentic wood—nothing mystical or dark about it.

“Alpha,” Allison marvels. She lets out a hysterical snort, amazed she didn’t see it before. “Oh my god, he became a True Alpha.”

Laura covers her face and shakes her head, looking thoroughly put out. “Merciful Mother. One of you becomes a Japanese demon of chaos, and another gets a level up? What the fuck—I don’t even want to know. Who else?”

“What do you mean? Only three of us went under.”

Laura rolls her eyes. “Yes, three of you. What happened to you? What about the people who anchored you?”

“Nothing,” Allison says, shrugging. 

She thinks of Lydia, Isaac, and Derek. In the months after, she hadn’t noticed anything different about them apart from the brief period of time Stiles lost his ability to read and Allison thought she’d completely lost touch with her ability as a hunter. She thinks about Scott’s fear of becoming like Peter, the encompassing feeling of suffocating fear that had enveloped her and her friends. Stiles would know more about Derek than she would, but she doesn’t remember anything different about him. And nothing definitive changed in her, not physically anyway. She considers the thick, oily blackness that she felt in her chest for months afterward.

“Nothing whatsoever, from what I can tell. Why?”

“When you went under, when your heart stopped: there was a part of you that died. But it’s a physical law, isn’t it? For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Just because it’s magic, doesn’t necessarily mean it can ignore the laws of the universe,” Laura explains. “The part of you that died made room for another part of you to grow or manifest. A rebirth, so to speak.”

“But Lydia was a banshee before the Nematon and Isaac was already a werewolf; nothing changed for them after the ritual. And nothing happened to me. I would’ve known, right? I mean if I died,” Allison begins. There’s something that’s been itching at her since Laura began explaining. “Laura, what was there to separate from my humanity? That’s what the ritual did, right? You wouldn’t have explained all that to me unless that’s what you thought happened. Something was split off in me. What did Deaton take from me?”

“Not Deaton,” Laura emphasizes. She looks down at the stump beneath her, splaying a hand across the wood. “Deaton may have torn the seams keeping you together, but no Druid has the power to take something like that for themselves.”

“Take what?” Allison asks, for what feels like the hundredth time.

“Your soul, baby girl,” Laura replies softly. “What else could you have to lose?”

Allison wants to laugh at the absurdity of it, wants to scratch at Laura or scream. But looking out at the darkness between the trees and the milky mist rolling along the treetops, she remembers where she ended up.

“So if I don’t have a soul, what am I now?” Allison licks her stone-grey lips, mouth going dry.

“To be honest?” Laura looks equally lost. It’s little consolation in light of the burden she’s carrying. “I have no clue.”

They walk away from the Nematon without glancing back.  
\---

More time passes: days, weeks, and months. Maybe. Who knows? Allison gives up trying to count after a while. There is no passing of the sun across the sky or changes in the weather to mark any passage of time, so a calendar of any sorts is really impossible to create or keep. The trees remain evergreen and the animals are still missing. The mist above her head changes in consistency sometimes, growing thick and swirling in lazy waves sometimes. Other times, it is sparse and shimmering. Laura tells her it depends on the number of creatures in the vicinity. It sounds like a guess, but Allison believes her anyway.

Allison believes in a lot of things, these days.

There’s no hunger, in addition to the perpetual insomnia in purgatory. Since there’s no time, there’s no real purpose for anything. But Allison has never been less bored. Together, her and Laura trek across the preserve. Laura teaches her about magic and werewolf lore, interweaving myth and science like they are halves of a whole. It’s mesmerizing, hearing the sides to stories she’d never bothered to be curious about. Since the day at the Nematon, it’s become increasingly clear that Laura is brilliant. She’s told Allison about her life back in New York and her whirlwind stories make it sound like she’s talking about an old friend.

“I went to Columbia,” she declares one day, proud but distant. “Grad and Undergrad.”

“What’d you study?” Allison asks, intrigued. Her own parents were Brown and Wellesley alumni, and she had been looking at Stanford, maybe Brown to make her dad happy. Things like college seem so trivial in the grand scope of things.

“Biophysics and Evolutionary Bio double degrees,” Laura sighs, kicking away at a pinecone. “Minored in linguistics for a while, but I had too many labs. Derek called me a geek, but he was a History dork. Wanna know what he majored in? Anthropology and Classical Civilization. At NYU. He focused on biological anthropology. What a fucking nerd.”

The sheer amount of knowledge she’s amassed over the course of her life is remarkable. It sours Allison’s mouth, clearly seeing for the first time what Derek had rarely spoken about. Talia was right in choosing Laura, Allison thinks: her strength, her knowledge, and her magnetism. It’s impossible not to follow someone like her. She hates to admit it, but Allison is relieved not to be the one leading, for once. She can’t imagine how much could have happened differently, had Laura been there in Beacon Hills. Alive. Brilliant. Ready.

If she ever sees Peter Hale again, there’s not a force on Earth or below it that could keep her from destroying him. For good, this time.  
\---

Not everything is perfect days and trading stories of home. There are spats and claw fights, Allison still clinging to the shattered relic of her family name and Laura trying to wring it from her fingers with an unflinching, borderline pathological, doggedness.

The worst of these incidents happens on a timeless, ordinary day where the mist is forgettable in its innocuousness. Allison thinks back on it, later, as some sort of yesterday. Allison had led them down by a cluster of pooled hot springs, where they had bathed in the water and basked in the mud. She can’t remember what started the fight, to be honest. Maybe a disparaging comment about her family, maybe a snide remark about Laura’s. The inciting factor is lost in the mist of purgatory. Next thing she knew, she and Laura were grappling in the steaming water, biting and clawing. They had split up for a while after that, stalking and limping away from each other in opposite directions. Allison ran for a long time, finally stopping at a familiar rocky outcropping. Without the city’s lights below it, the drop-off had felt eerie and empty.

Allison thinks of Scott and secret messages written on boulders and windows. She thinks of her father, red-eyed and unflinching in his devotion. And Lydia’s soft beauty and fiery brilliance: smiling and screaming and sleeping next to her. She remembers all she’s managed to push away since she woke up, naked and numb, in a place she’d never believed in. She remembers everything and is crushed by it. Curling into the dirt, she lets herself feel the disappointment that, for once, Laura isn’t there to quell the silence. She screams into the distance and no one replies.  
\---

“I think I’m done running,” Allison hears from behind her, maybe a handful of hours later. It really is hard to gage how long it’s been. “You?”

Allison sits up, wiping away at her face and nodding. She scrapes the last bits of mud from her skin and opens up from her tight huddle. Yes, she wants to scream. Thank you for coming back, is on her tongue. She nods instead.

“I’m sorry,” Laura says, dropping to sit beside her. “I don’t remember what for, but I’m sorry about it.”

Allison nods and leans into Laura a bit, instinctually seeking closeness and comfort. She’s never really been one for affection. She doesn’t blame her parents, but she can’t really remember them being the sort of parents who cuddled her or hugged her just because. Scott used to tease her about it. He’d called her a marble statue when they spooned sometimes, because Allison wouldn’t move for hours at a time. He’d tickle her ribs, his fingers digging into her sides and making her squirm away. This feels different than anything she’d ever had with Scott. Laura’s body warmth feels like hunger. It carves out coldness, has Allison chasing after more: a reminder that she isn’t really alone. A reminder that she is as alive as she wants to believe. Laura shifts until she can gather Allison to her, curling her arm around her back. She hesitates, not really hugging Allison but holding her together all the same. 

“Do you think there’s a way out of here?” Allison croaks. Her voice is raw and froggy from disuse. She’d hardly spoken a word since she’d last seen Laura.

“It’s purgatory, Argent,” she responds, grip tightening momentarily. “I think permanence is kind of the point.”

“But if there were,” Allison presses. “Would you leave with me?”

Laura doesn’t answer, choosing instead to press her lips to Allison’s mouth. She should see it coming, after everything. Allison takes the silence as it is and turns into the kiss, exhales deep enough that her chest aches with it. Laura strokes her fingers along her side and Allison forgets, at least for a little while, that she’d ever asked anything.  
\---

Since the fight, they don’t speak too much more of magic or mythology. They keep travelling together, running around the preserve side by side. The hesitation between them has continued to thaw; they are becoming less jagged around their edges, less prone to distrust and antagonizing. There have been more kisses, softer touches: nothing more than little acts of grace and trust. There’s little else for company, as there have been few encounters with anyone else. Allison has seen other beings, creatures. There was another werewolf, once, bright blue eyes glowing from behind a sickly looking oak tree near the mouth of the river.

“Wolf,” Allison had warned, letting her lips curl and body tense, like there wasn’t another one behind her. Laura, meanwhile, had flashed her eyes and put a calming hand on Allison’s shoulder, rubbed her thumb against the ball of it until she had straightened from her defensive crouch. The wolf disappeared, walking backwards into the mist.

“There’s not much to fear from anything out here,” Laura had said soothingly. The spot on Allison’s skin still felt warm. “You’re okay.”

The memory is a good one, Allison decides. She doesn’t stop to think of the way she’s been gravitating towards Laura. When Laura moves, so does Allison; when she changes course mid-run, Allison shifts to follow. They run fast, but not inhumanly so. Laura can’t achieve more than the beta shift, here. The claws are always out, fingertips always pointed and sharp. The eyes come and go, but Laura’s explained she hasn’t been able to feel her wolf after she stopped sleeping in her alpha form when she arrived.

“There’s like a fuzziness where I used to feel her,” she explained. “I can’t reach her where she’s supposed to be, anymore.”

Allison wonders how Laura manages to stay sane sometimes. She can feel the loss of her soul so heavily, sometimes it feels like there’s a gaping hole in her chest. Those “days”, she and Laura find somewhere to stop. They stay in one place, curved around each other until Allison can move without feeling like she wants to tear herself apart. Laura never says anything, but she does offer comfort with firm touches and knowing glances. It’s enough.  
\---

Allison has long since culled any sense of shame or embarrassment around Laura. The shock of waking up buck naked in front of a stranger had lost its value after the third time they’d had to crowd close together to stave off the cold, no cave or fire to keep warm. They don’t sleep, but they close their eyes and rest, curled around each other’s bodies until it’s time to move again. Shyness isn’t even a concept, here.

One night, Allison’s curiosity eventually wins out. They’re laying together, flat on their backs, in their cave. She doesn’t know when she started referring to it as theirs. Too much time alone, maybe. Or maybe it’s something simpler than that. Maybe they’ve become something borne out of necessity or desperation. Whatever it is itches in her fingers, palms, and over her skin. She waits, lets it linger, until one night she feels it in her teeth. It moves her to reach a gentle hand out to run a finger down Laura’s cheek. Laura turns into the touch, unquestioning. Allison hums softly and trails her fingertips, braver now, down Laura’s jaw and her throat. Laura gives a soft growl as Allison’s fingers come to rest at her pulse point. She smiles, small and soft in the glow of the fire before clearing her throat.

“Were you alone before I got here?” she asks. She doesn’t know the answer she’s looking for until Laura replies, and then it’s not what she expects.

“Mmmmh,” Laura groans, turning onto her side to look down at Allison. “I never stayed in one place long enough to really notice. Everyone here mostly keeps to themselves, you know. But I thought I saw my little brother once.”

Allison stills, hand freezing on Laura’s clavicle.

“He looked so lost, so alone. I felt so relieved to see him,” Laura whispers. “I knew what it meant, for him to be here. But I just wanted to see his face.”

“Derek?” Allison hazards a guess.

Laura nods.

“It didn’t last too long. He turned around and then he was just…gone. I didn’t get to say goodbye. Again.”

She doesn’t cry. Allison expects her to, but the tears never come. Allison thinks Laura’s cried herself empty. Glancing up at her, there’s a deep-rooted longing in the lines of her face. One she feels in the marrow of her bones.

“Did you know him?” Laura asks after a moment, the tenderness of her voice gone. She sounds cautious. “When you were alive?”

And there it is, what they’ve been dancing around the entire time they’ve been together. They’d tiptoed around it long enough, talked about every topic except this one. Allison suspects there’s motive behind that, but she gives Laura the benefit of the doubt.

“Yeah, I knew Derek,” Allison says. “What do you want to know?”

Laura shifts again, flipping to lie on her stomach next to her and resting her cheek on her folded arms. Allison wonders at how far they’ve come; wonders at what she’d done to make Laura Hale feel safe enough to show her the vulnerability of her turned back.

“How was he?” Laura asks. “I should have guessed he’d follow me; I never should’ve told him I was coming home. I was still holding out he’d find his place without me. In New York, he was always drifting. Nothing was ever enough to hold him down.”

I was never enough, Allison hears.

“He came looking for you and he found your body instead,” Allison doesn’t try to sugarcoat it. The least Laura deserves is the truth, at its rawest and most bare. “After that, he and Scott tried to figure out who the Alpha was. There were some complications.”

She has Laura’s full attention now and Allison can’t help but feel like she’s buckling under the weight of her own past. Peter’s name goes unsaid.

“Did you know about what started the fire?”

Laura stiffens, head coming up and mouth folding down into a taught line.

“I didn’t find out until it was too late. Kate, my aunt Kate,” she manages through dry sobs. “I don’t know if she had something to prove or if it was strictly Gerard. She used Derek; she was the one who planned it all. She trapped everyone inside with mountain ash. I’m so sorry.”

Laura slowly turns and shifts until she’s settled on her side, facing the stone wall of the cave Allison gives her a few moments before she can continue.

“All Peter wanted was revenge and he got it. He killed Kate,” she sniffles, wipes at her face. Calm. Clinical. In control. “Then Derek killed him. He took the Alpha shift from Peter.”

Laura closes her eyes and breathes out a sigh of relief, her shoulders collapsing inward. She’s folded in on herself, as if she can keep out the hurt. Allison wonders, briefly, what it’s like to find solace in knowing the right part of your family—the last of it—has to shoulder an entire legacy alone. She wonders until she realizes she doesn’t have to: she knows exactly how that feels.

“Poor kid,” Laura finally says. She feels miles away, for all of the 5 inches between them. “He just can’t catch a fucking break.”

They’re quiet again.

“Is he…was he happy?” she asks. Allison thinks it would have been nice to have had older siblings; someone else to shoulder the blame. But maybe that’s it; maybe the difference between guilt and blame was the size of your shoulders. Maybe firstborns were just built differently, made to carry the burdens of those who would come after you. Again, she’s reminded how different things would have been with Laura as Alpha.

“He was pretty unstable for a while, in the beginning. Scott says his anchor was anger,” Allison explains. “He turned three kids at our school. There was a lot of pointing fingers and posturing. Then, two of his betas died. And I think it really changed Derek; he wasn’t the same after they were killed. He’s better, now...more centered. Stronger.”

Laura huffs and turns back towards Allison, eyes red but clear.

“He wasn’t really brought up to be an Alpha,” Laura admits. She sounds ashamed, but there’s frustration there too. “Dad had hoped it would be Derek, but Mom was always pushing for me. Derek was always harder to pin down; he always fought everything that should have come naturally. He manifested his first shift when he was five. That’s unheard of with us.”

“What was Derek’s anchor back then?” Allison asks. She’s not sure she’ll get an answer, but this is the most she’s ever known about Derek. It both refutes and supports the Derek’s she’s known: angry, driven, steadfast. “It wasn’t always anger, was it?”

“It was our dad, for a while,” Laura says sadly. “Then I think it became our family, after he died. He wasn’t meant to be alpha because he was always ruled by his emotions; he loved too fiercely, lived too wildly. I don’t know the Derek you know, but mine? He would have made the perfect beta: loyal to a fault.”

Allison can see that. “He isn’t an alpha anymore. He gave it up to save your sister.”

Before Allison can correct herself, try to soften the blow, Laura chokes on a sharp inhale. In one swift movement, Laura is crouched before Allison eyes glowing and face pale.

“Cora.”

“She escaped the fire,” Allison tries to soothe her, hand`s out so her palms face Laura. “She’s alive and in Beacon Hills. She’s part of Scott’s pack. Laura, she’s fine.”

Laura trembles and slides against the wall of the cave. Then, the tears she’d been trying to hide fall down her cheeks. “Oh my God, Cora.”

“She came, right before the Alpha pack did,” something hits Allison, then. “You asked, before, about changes caused by the Nematon. I think that was one of them. Derek was Stiles’ anchor, he was there for the ritual. After we came out, Derek had to heal Cora and he gave up his alpha power to save her. I think that was the Nematon.”

Laura smiles, weak and a little watery, and she looks proud.

“I’m glad he has her,” she breathes. “I’m glad they’re not alone.”

“I don’t think Stiles would give Derek the chance to be alone, honestly,” Allison admits. She gives Laura this, too. There’s nothing to be gained in keeping anything from her anymore.

“Stiles?” Laura asks, seeing the small mercy for what it is. “The Nogitsune?”

“Not anymore, I hope,” Allison gulps. “He was always...he’s important to all of us.”

“And to Derek?” Laura asks. Her eyebrows have climbed halfway up her forehead, but she’s grinning and her eyes still shining. “Is it—does he love him?”

Allison nods. “They love each other. It’s good,” she says through a wet chuckle. “They’re really good for each other.”

Laura closes her eyes and breathes out, tears seeping out from under her eyelashes. Sometimes, Allison realizes, relief takes just as much from you as the pain that came before it.  
\---

After the night in the cave, things change. Allison is less cautious in response to Laura’s advances towards her and, in return, Laura makes more of them. Touches, once hesitant and chaste, blossom into warm, exploratory things. Allison spends as much time kissing Laura as she does speaking with her. It’s different than anything she’s ever felt before and Allison throws herself into whatever this thing is without hesitation. What started out as a desperate attempt to avoid being alone, has bloomed into something precious and new.

They’re by the springs again, when Allison decides to go for it. She glances sideways and sees Laura assessing her, eyes travelling up and down, and she rolls her eyes. Facing her, she plants a hand on her side and waits for Laura’s eyes to meet her own. When they do, it’s with a warm smile. Allison walks closer, eyeing the beads of sweat trailing down Laura’s chest. She touches her finger to the droplet and follows it down, dipping into Laura’s belly button. She splays her hand there, taking in Laura’s warmth and appreciating the hard muscle of her stomach.

Laura takes her by the wrist and brings her hand to her breast, using her hand to tighten Allison’s grasp and play with her nipple. Allison’s fooled around with exactly one other girl before, back when she was in San Francisco. Her name was Nicole and she had red hair and braces, small palmfuls of breasts that Allison would grope over her bra when they made out. Laura is built completely differently, with wide hips and shoulders. Her waist doesn’t fit in her palms the same way her own does. Allison explores, running her hands over her breasts and back. She bends down to take a nipple into her mouth and grazes her teeth over it, moaning when Laura bucks underneath her. Her reaction makes Allison want to get a little braver, bringing her right hand to Laura’s mouth. She thumbs Laura’s bottom lip, catches a fang on the pad of her index finger. Laura shudders a gasp and then Allison is on her back against the grass by the pool, mouth moving against Laura’s.

“Didn’t anyone ever teach you not to play with your food, Hale?” she gasps when they break apart. “What, were you raised by wolves or something?”

Laura laughs, muffled against Allison’s neck and then she bites down on the skin there. Her fangs drag against the thin skin of her throat and this is officially the best thing she’s ever felt. She’s lost to the sensations of Laura’s claws running down the soft skin of her thighs, eyes closed and smiling. It makes it hard for Laura to kiss her, but they’re both laughing anyway. Laura’s fingers stop at the crease where her thighs meet her pelvis and it takes Allison a moment to realize why.

“Oh my God,” she gasps, laughing into Laura’s shoulder. “Oh my God. Can you shift them back?”

“What do you think I’ve been trying to do since we started making out, Allison?” Laura fires back.

“What if we just,” Allison pauses eyeing the clawed tips of Laura’s fingers. “Do you think, if we’re just really careful—”

“I am not going anywhere near your honeypot with my claws,” Laura emphasizes her statement with a slight tightening of her grip. Little red pinpricks of blood appear on Allison’s inner thigh and she moans in response, throwing an arm over her reddening face. She doesn’t have to see Laura’s face to know there’s a little bit of judgment there.

“That’s not what I was going to say,” Allison pants into her forearm. “If you’re careful, you can still go down on me.”

“Well, I—it’s. I’m well aware of what I can still do, Argent. I’m just a little,” she pauses, eyes flashing gold. “Distracted.”

Leaning forward, Laura bends to press kisses to Allison’s stomach. She sucks little marks down the center of her belly, lapping in between her fangs to bite and tongue at her skin. Allison arches forward into the sensation, her hands tangling in Laura’s hair. Laura makes her way down her pelvis, still licking and biting at whatever skin she can reach. By the time Laura is licking into her, she’s writhing and panting against the grass. Laura’s hands are digging into Allison’s hips, scratches drawing small pools of blood. Allison doesn’t quite bleed, however. The tears in her skin shine red for an instant before fading into silvery seams and disappearing completely.

Allison bucks into Laura’s mouth and feels the pinpricks of fangs before stilling. Laura pulls away with a chuckle, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Allison smiles and flips them over, straddling Laura’s pelvis. She rolls her hips, grinding against her pubic bone. When it isn’t enough, she slips a leg between Laura’s thighs and angles hips. Thrusting forward again draws a loud, breathy moan from the back of Laura’s throat. The sound is lewd and loud; Allison loves it. She crouches back over Laura, bringing their mouth together and licking inside. They move together, clumsily writhing in a tangle of limbs and mouths.

Allison pulls back to breath and sucks her fingers into her mouth. She brings a hand between their pelvises and slips her fingertips into the wetness between Laura’s legs. Slowly, she circles them until she feels her clit. Surging back into Laura’s mouth, she starts bucking forward with purpose. Her movements become slower and more purposeful, despite Laura twisting underneath her. Allison feels powerful and beautiful, bent over Laura. It’s exciting to her the gasps and growls from her throat; Allison is quiet, letting only pants and grunts slip from her mouth. She nibbles at Laura’s chin and jaw, licks her way down to Laura’s neck. A growl stills her, forces her eyes up to Laura’s face.

Her eyes are flashing gold, fangs dropped. There are beads of sweat slipping down from her forehead, dripping down her temple to her chin and neck. Allison’s slows her fingers, brings one up to her mouth again. She’s staring right at Laura when she slips her index finger past her lips, bringing the salty sweet taste of her onto her tongue. Laura chokes on another moan and comes, bucking against Allison with a snarl. It’s wonderful and savage and Allison has never been more turned on. She whines and falls against Laura’s chest.

Allison is close, so unbearably close. She lets Laura flip them again, until her back is sliding against the wet grass and silty bank of the pool. She closes her eyes at the press of Laura’s hips, eyes watering and throat tightening with her want. Laura straddles her sideways, clutching a leg to her chest and riding her with sharp grinding movements. Allison scrabbles to move her hand under her leg and slips two fingers inside herself. With Laura’s determined grinding, it only takes a handful of clumsy thrusts of her fingers to climax. She lets out a harsh exhale, riding her hand through her orgasm. Her throat loosens with exhaustion, her body breaking out into goosebumps. It’s a bone-deep feeling, the relief.

Still catching her breath, Allison glances over at Laura. Sprawled on her back in the grey-green sunlight, she looks like every kind of beautiful Allison can think of. The muscles on her arms twitch and contract as she stretches her limbs in lazy jerks. There’s mud and who knows what else on both of their skins; scratches still healing into faint silvery lines, bruises blooming. Long after her death, Allison has never felt so alive.

“Alright then, jail bait. Good to go?” Laura leers, rolling onto her side.

Allison lunges forward and nips at Laura shoulder in response. She jumps to her feet and sprints forward into the forest, Laura chasing after her and laughing.  
\---

The last few days have actually felt like days and Laura doesn’t have an explanation. The sky has been changing, fading in and out of a velvety black. Currently, it’s a rosy turquoise and under any other circumstances it would be gorgeous. But there’s a change in the mist, now. Swirling and inky black, it whips back and forth through the tops of the trees. Their branches sway and the leaves rustle. A few leaves snap of, floating towards the ground until they blend in with the decaying mulch of the forest floor. Laura tightens her hold on Allison’s wrist and they move on.

The last long while has been spent fooling around and making love in wherever they can lay down comfortably. Allison carries bruises and bite marks on her collarbones, throat, and thighs. She likes them; enjoys watching them fade and goading Laura into replacing them. But now, they feel heavy on her skin—like weights sinking into the soles of her feet. 

They fuck in the cave, one night. It’s frantic and lovely, just this side of violent. When they’ve both exhausted themselves, they move outside and sit shoulder to shoulder at the mouth of the cave. Laura mouths at a bruise just below Allison’s ear, pulling away suddenly. She turns towards the forest, eyes narrowed as if watching for something. Allison holds her breath, arms poised to push herself up if they need to run. They haven’t seen anyone else in a while, but it’s been hard not to feel on edge lately. Laura finally falls back into Allison’s shoulder with a heavy sigh. Allison relaxes and takes her weight, wondering.

“Something’s wrong,” Allison says. “Something’s happening.”

Laura nods, tucking her face into Allison’s neck. She doesn’t speak and that’s telling, in and of itself. Laura kisses her neck and presses her nose to the ball of Allison’s shoulder, just breathing in the smell of her. Them. Grass and mud. The stone walls of the cave. The bittersweet, minty smell of the forest. Allison can’t pick apart these different smells and this marks the first time she ever wishes she were more than human. This is the first time in her life she truly wishes she were something else; something that could allow her to pick apart everything that belongs to Laura and to them. Her eyes, ears, nose and even her mouth aren’t enough to capture everything they’ve become together. Allison shifts towards Laura, brings her into her arms and tries to imagine it’s enough.

“I love you,” she whispers into Laura’s skin. She doesn’t know it’s true until the words are already out of her mouth. She doesn’t regret them; she thinks about every other time she’s ever said them to anyone else. They are no less true or worthy because of where she is now, or whoever else’s name has ever followed them.

Laura huffs, scratches at her hair. “Good,” she says after a few moments of silence. “Me too.”

The mist tumbles into itself, growing more opaque against the evening sky.  
\---

When Allison opens her eyes, she feels an ache in her chest. It’s not until she sits up that she realizes she’d actually been asleep. The cave is empty and the fire is out, embers long since gone cold. She stumbles to her feet and jogs outside, almost missing Laura standing to the side. She’s gazing out at the mist, eyes flashing and body near twitching in how tensed stiffness. Fear plays on Laura’s face, sinking into the tightness of her mouth and the franticness of her gaze, and Allison knows something is wrong.

“Laura, what’s going on?” Allison demands, walking up to her and laying a hand on her arm.  
Laura rests her hand on top of hers, still looking out towards the treetops, and squeezes her hand. Allison isn’t particularly comforted. Laura glances at Allison then back towards whatever has her attention in the forest. She nods to herself and turns to throw her arms around Allison, hugging her to her chest.

“It’s time,” she says. “We don’t—I wanted to say goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” Allison repeats. “What? Laura, what’s happening?”

Allison’s head swirls and it makes her feel dizzy. She can hear Laura’s words, but it registers late. Everything looks fuzzy and the textures are blending together. She stumbles but Laura catches her and pulls her upright, brings her face to meet hers. She strokes Allison’s cheek and she looks heartbroken. Her bright eyes are watering and Allison wants desperately to fix whatever is going wrong. Everything feels like its turning upside down and Laura is supposed to be the one stable thing in here; everything in purgatory could fall apart, but Laura was always Allison’s guarantee that they’d make it. Allison was never supposed to be alone again.

“Allison,” she whispers into Allison’s ear. “Don’t come back. Just—don’t forget either.”

Allison scrabbles at her hands but before she can ask Laura what she’s talking about she feels her limbs start to buzz, like static trapped under her skin. Her arms start to blacken from the fingers inwards, the color pulsing until her whole body turns a shadowy black. She sees Laura’s face in tunnel vision, focusing on her glowing eyes until the darkness overtakes her.  
\---

She wakes up, alone and naked in the Beacon Hills Preserve. This is the real preserve; she can tell by the noises she hasn’t heard in purgatory. Owls hooting, crickets chirping, the breeze rustling leaves. There’s no mist above her; the sky is dark, stars twinkling like Christmas lights. There’s shouting coming from her left, voices she might be able to remember if she weren’t so tired. She’s exhausted, eyes blurring and head heavy. There’s a flash of coppery brown hair and white teeth, a soft, worried woman’s voice.

Laura is nowhere to be found.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fic title from Bloc Party's "Signs"; chapter titles from Ben Howard's "Gracious". Both songs are my heartsongs for Allison Argent.
> 
> To check out the mix CD I'd drop in Allison's locker for her and her hot girlfriend, Laura Hale, [check out the 8tracks mix I made](http://8tracks.com/anaisnt/undead-girlfriends)  
> 


	2. the silhouettes you drew here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I would kill to be the cold  
> Tracing your body and shaking your bones  
> But I can't sleep at night,  
> I can't sleep at night

“It was a spell,” Lydia explains later, perched on a dilapidated chair in Sheriff Stilinski’s living room. “It wasn’t really supposed to actually bring you from anywhere.”

It’s mid-November. Lydia is fresh off a research fellowship and Stiles is taking time off from work. They’d gotten together to catch up and hash some things out. From the looks of things, there was a lot to hash out.

“It’s been rough, these last few months,” Lydia continues. “Too much fighting, not enough healing. Catching up turns into bar hopping. Next thing I know, we’re out in the preserve with an empty tequila bottle in my purse, and we’re halfway through a summoning spell.”

Lydia’s voice is steady as she speaks, but every now and then her left hand trembles. She gulps at a water bottle and rubs her eyelids, flopping onto the couch. The careful, graceful way she used to move is gone; the Lydia Martin in front of her now is sharper, harder. Her hair is dyed dark green, shorn in frizzy waves just above her nape in the back and chin-length around her face. Her eyes are colder, flinty in the light of the fireplace. There are thick pink scars on her forearms and on her neck, just below her jaw. She catches Allison staring and grins, tired and without teeth. Lydia’s gaze travels from Allison’s eyes to her mouth and away again, studying the grey tips of Allison’s fingers. Allison twitches under her gaze, uncomfortable with the clinical, removed study of all that makes her monstrous. She picks at a hangnail until it weeps sluggish, black blood onto her nail bed and quickly sucks the fingertip into her mouth before it can draw Lydia’s attention.

There’s a small group of them that came running when Stiles shakily sent out a text and they now sit huddled together in the front room of Stiles’ dad’s house. The Sheriff stands in front of the sofa, arms crossed and peering down at Stiles with barely concealed fury. A small, chubby blonde girl is cross-legged on the floor seated on a battered cushion, thumbs flying over the screen of her phone. Stiles slumps on the sofa, cowed and quiet. He hasn’t stopped staring at Allison since she appeared in the Preserve, gaze flickering from Allison’s mouth to her eyes in horror. Where Lydia looks at her with curiosity, Allison can almost smell the fear oozing from Stiles. She can’t quite bring herself to feel offended: she’s seen her face, too.

Stiles looks the most drastically different, even in the face of Lydia’s hair and scars. The years have taken just as much from him as anyone else. His skin is bruised around his eyes, wide and wet like a calf, age sunken into the lavender hollows above his too sharp cheekbones. A jagged, pink scar cuts into his mouth from his chin to just below his nose. He’s still thin and tall, but he wears his skin differently; his shoulders are wide and his forearms are hardened with muscle. The soft, frumpiness of high school has disappeared into chasms created by the sharp edges of his knuckles and teeth. While Lydia looks hardened, Stiles looks brutal. Allison eyes the tattoos that wind around his throat and sprawl onto the curves of his clavicle; beneath them, there are scars bearing a strong resemblance to the ones on Lydia’s neck. Stiles scratches at them with the flesh-blunt ends of his fingers. Lydia slaps at his hands and he drops them, eyes snapping to Allison again. He skulks around her like a something small and soft would move around a predator and it puts her on edge.

Allison wants Scott. She wants to see a face unmarked by half a decade of sorrow and pain and whatever else has plagued her friends these past years.

He isn’t here, but apparently someone’s called him. There’s a baby blue blanket around her shoulders because she doesn’t really feel up to wearing real clothes right now. “Baby steps,” the blonde girl, Ruby, had chirped, eyes wide and skittish. She was careful not to touch Allison when she handed off the blanket, but her face was kind.

“Has anyone gotten ahold of Deaton?” the Sheriff asks, eyes unmoving from Stiles’ slumped form. “What about Derek? We need to figure out what the hell we’re dealing with here.”

Allison winces. The Sheriff looks apologetic for s split second before his face tenses again.

“It was a spirit-summoning: it wasn’t supposed to bring her here,” Stiles mumbles through his fingers. He bites at his nails and cuticles, thumb already bleeding. “Not like this. Just like her spirit or a projection of it, not something this real. We just wanted to talk—”

“We need to call Chris,” Lydia talks over him. “Cora and Malia are still en route from Portland, they’re bringing Scott on their way down. Maybe there’s—”

“What were you thinking?” The Sheriff asks for the second time since they stormed through his door. Lydia purses her lips, eyes flicking between the Sheriff and Stiles. He’s staring down at Stiles, hands on his hips. Stiles picks up a bottle of water and starts shredding the label. His eyes go unfocused as he stares at his fingers. Allison watches a bead of blood slip onto the plastic, follows it as it drips onto the carpet.

“We weren’t,” Stiles rasps, teeth tight around the words. “I’m not even sober yet, so can we please just wait to call me on my questionable life choices?”

The Sheriff seethes.

“Also, I feel it’s important to note it wasn’t just me: Lydia’s the one with the spell, I’m just the power generator.”

The door in the kitchen slams shut and Derek thumps in, heavy coat still wet from the rain outside. He kicks off heavy boots and drops a heavy burlap bag onto the floor. He takes off his coat, revealing a cotton baby sling and a wriggling, hiccupping bump. Stiles immediately stiffens in his seat, head snapping up to follow Derek as he walks to him. He loosens the sling and hands him a swaddled infant; Stiles immediately tucks the baby against his neck and angles his body away from Allison, mouth pulled in a tight grimace.

Allison can’t take her eyes off them.

Derek’s eyes narrow at Stiles, “Who even keeps a spirit-summoning spell in their purse?”

Stiles, one arm still around a snuffling baby, points at Derek and nods frantically. Lydia blinks steadily, unperturbed, and turns back to study Allison. They’re all watching her closely, afraid to touch her and it’s driving her insane. After so long with Laura, she needs the closeness of someone’s body. She’s shivering, teeth chattering with her chills. Or maybe she’s just trembling, splitting apart at the seams. Lydia lays a gentle hand on her arm and Allison exhales through her nose. Clinical. Cool. In control. Allison touches the back of her hand with her fingers and flinches when Lydia stiffens. Glancing down at her own hands, Allison sees her bone white skin and the strangeness of her fingertips, still stained a pale, smoky grey.

The loud rapping on the door startles everyone. The Sheriff opens it to allow Malia and Scott inside, Cora just behind them. Scott is panting heavily, broken open and too much for Allison to look at. He looks so lost. She stands up, knuckles tight with the force of her grip on the blanket.

“Allison?” he breathes.

The room is quiet as Derek and the Sheriff shuffle out everyone except Scott. On his way out, pushing a protesting Stiles in front of him, Derek sniffs at her. She can feel when he stops mid-stride to stare. Allison knows what he can smell on her and it takes all of her not to follow him out. He puts an arm around Stiles and the baby, then guides them into the living room.

“Allison? Are you really—how?” Scott wonders, eyes glassy.

She can’t think of anything to say; she hasn’t spoken much since she came back. But Scott is here and he’s staring at her like she’s the best thing he’s ever seen, ink stained mouth and all. She shudders out a breath and folds herself into Scott’s arms when he comes for her. She doesn’t cry, but it’s a near thing.

“I missed you,” she mumbles into his shoulder.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” he says back.

Alive. She clings tighter, fingers digging into his jacket.

“You smell so weird,” he says, trying to laugh but it comes out a little shaky. “Like trees and wet dog, a little bit like magic.”

Allison does laugh then, hysterically, until she starts to cry too. Scott lets go of her with one arm to guide her back down to the couch. They both pause to catch their breaths, not bothering to pretend they’re not crying. He looks good, more solid. There are some lines at the corners of his eyes and he’s broader than he used to be, grown into his body and role as alpha. His hair is buzzed and there’s a smooth, pink scar on his scalp stitching down from his left temple to the nape of his neck. Allison reaches out to touch and pulls her hand back, quickly tucking it into the folds of the blanket. Scott’s lips quirk in a smile as he drags it back out, curling his fingers around her hand. There’s so much different about him but his smile is the same. Allison can’t believe she’d almost forgotten about this, about him.

“What happened?” he asks, rubbing small circles into her palm. “Where did Lydia and Stiles find you?”

She doesn’t know all the answer yet, but she pieces together what she knows for him. By the end of it, he looks equally horrified and hopeful.

“I remember the day it happened,” she says, softly. “I felt—I knew I shouldn’t have been alive. And it didn’t feel like I was there for very long, but it also felt like forever. And then I was in the preserve. Here.”

He nods, like necromancy is just another bullet point on his pack’s resume. It’s not as worrisome as it should be, Allison thinks.

“We’ll talk to Deaton and figure this all out. We need to see if this is…we need to understand this,” he says, cutting himself off with a loud swallow. If this is temporary. He sounds seventeen again, eyes wide and bright in his earnestness. There’s no such thing as werewolves. “I promise, everything will be okay.”

There’s no such thing as fate.

It’s not, Allison knows, but it might be soon. It’s home.  
\---

They call Deaton and her father, end up having to wait to meet until Chris can fly in from France. Meanwhile, she’s staying in a modest apartment downtown with a lease under his name. There’s always someone with her, sleeping on the couch at night or sitting at the table during the day. They alternate, taking turns to keep an eye on her. Everyone but Stiles, who stays away regardless of who comes to keep watch, and Derek—who hasn’t left since Scott moved Allison in. It’s the source of some kind of blowout between Derek and Stiles. Allison hears one side of it, Derek pacing around the apartment’s front hallway while he’s on the phone. She waits until the silence lasts longer than a few minutes before stepping out of her room. She joins Derek at the kitchen table that night, quietly sitting at his side as he drinks a cup of coffee. 

Derek is actually kind of a problem. He won’t stop watching her, tracking her every movement with narrowed eyes and a frown on his face. Cora doesn’t exactly know what’s going on, but she’s walking on eggshells while she tries to make sense of the tension between Derek and Allison. Stiles is desperately trying to avoid her, tucking himself away, wherever he is, with the baby. Lydia, Malia, and even Ruby are scurrying around from apartment to apartment trying to maintain some sort of peace. It’s exhausting to watch, so Allison removes herself from it all and just tries to sleep, but it takes a couple of days for her body to adjust to actually living again.

One night, she sits at the front table with Derek and he slides a cup of black coffee over. She grips it tight, sipping at it slowly. It’s a peace offering: a kind of new start. And Allison will take what she can.  
\---

Chris boards a red eye from Paris three days after Lydia calls him and is scheduled to get in about 22 hours after he calls her to confirm a ride from the airport. Everyone shuffles out of the apartment to give them privacy, even Derek; Allison hasn’t left since they brought her here. Even if she wanted to, Allison can’t exactly go grocery shopping looking the way she does. Besides, she’s still acclimating and trying to remember how to move outside of purgatory. She looks exactly like she did when she was seventeen, grey skin aside, but she moves like she’s decades older.

Allison forgets about everything when her dad walks in the door at 3 am and immediately gathers her up in his arms. He hugs her tight and she can’t believe she’s actually here. They don’t speak, but there’s not a whole lot to say. It’s her father: he’s warm, solid around her and she feels like she can finally breathe again. They’re still holding each other when they sit down on the couch.

“Dad,” she croaks, afraid to see his face when he notices everything about her that’s changed.

“I’m so happy to see you,” he says, throat tight and eyes wet.

She laughs and hugs him again. “I missed you so much,” she says into the shoulder of his jacket. “I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologize for, Allison,” he says wetly. “You did all you could do; I’m so proud of you. And I love you so much.”

Scott drops off the bags from the car as she clings to her father. When he’s brought up the last of Chris’ things, he bows out of the apartment quickly and quietly. On his way out Allison catches his eye and smiles at him.

“Thank you,” she says.

He nods and then he’s gone before her dad can show him out.  
\---

Deaton clears his throat, smiling at Allison with something like an apology written across his face. He opens with, “Religious mythology and various folklore call your kind Shadow People.”

Allison glances down at her hands, feels her fingers pulse and turn black. She blinks and they return to their previous stark white. Beside her, she can feel her dad grow still. Across from her, Lydia has gone pale and even Derek looks a muscle twitch away from shifting. Everyone is crowded into the apartment, even a few faces Allison doesn’t recognize.

“Is is permanent, then?” Scott asks, the calm in his voice barely hiding his earnest hopefulness. “This isn’t dependent on the spell or anything else?”

“It seems as though the summoning spell was a catalyst. Perhaps her shift recognized the voices calling her? It could also be that the veil between planes was particularly thin due to a crossing over. Who knows why Allison came when she did? But the effects are permanent, yes, Scott. Allison will stay in this realm so long as she chooses to remain here.”

Allison can’t help the relief that floods her, eyes closing as she lets go of the breath she’d been holding.

“So am I alive?” Allison asks, addressing the elephant in the room. She flexes her fingers until she notices Ruby staring at them and then shoves her hands under her thighs.

“In a way, yes. But the term is not quite accurate,” Deaton explains in a way that doesn’t really explain anything. His face is carefully blank now, but Allison can parse out his guilt anyway. “You are a physical manifestation of the in-between. So, you are as alive as the plane in which we exist; as alive as the universe or time itself. Similar to how demons exist outside of hell, you are connected to the plane from which you came. Almost like an untethered spirit, you have the unique ability to travel between planes. You are a shadow of limbo: neither of this world, nor the next.”

“Okay, let’s cut the mumbo jumbo here, Alan. So Allison’s, what, a purgatory demon?” Stiles asks, squinting in disbelief. The baby is absent, most likely with the Sheriff, who stayed back at the house. His arms twitch, like he’s not used to them being so empty.

Lydia piggybacks off him, “How is that even possible?” She takes out a tablet form her backpack and begins tapping at it, meticulously taking notes. All the while, she glances at Allison—somewhere between worried and curious. Shadow person doesn’t exactly sound benevolent. “How did she even end up there?”

Allison shifts in her seat, picking at the cotton of her blouse. Lydia rests a gentle hand over hers, stilling her fingers as she continues typing with one hand. She’s grateful for the touch, that Lydia isn’t shying away from her anymore, but she doesn’t understand. Allison feels stifled, too weighed down under the heaviness of clothes. Lydia offers her a small smile and Allison blinks in response.

“It’s because I have no soul,” she says, looking over at Deaton. “Isn’t it?”

The room goes quiet. Allison sees her father surge forward out of the corner of her eye and her hand shoots out to grip his wrist. She realizes no one else knows.

“The Nematon,” she licks her lips before continuing. “It absorbed my soul after Deaton severed the tie between it and my body. I don’t belong here, but since I was attached to a living body I can’t belong anywhere else. My true form probably doesn’t even look like this because I’m not human anymore.”

“I know I’m right,” she says when no one speaks. “I wouldn’t have been able to come back here unless I was.”

Deaton nods, haltingly.

“You are correct in thinking you’re no longer human. Is that where you’ve been all this time?” he asks her. “Purgatory?”

“Wait just a fucking minute, there, Alan,” Chris demands. His teeth clack as he speaks, so infuriated his hand is shaking in Allison’s grip. “You’re telling me you took my daughter’s soul in some dark magic—”

“He didn’t take anything,” Allison interrupts. “It’s not in a Druid’s power to take, just separate: he’s the scissors, not the flame. The Nematon took it from me, used it as kindling to fuel the ritual we performed to find it when the Darach took you, Melissa, and the Sheriff.”

She turns to look at Stiles and Scott, then Lydia and Derek. “It took something from all of us who went through the ritual; none of the humans who were there are entirely human anymore. But it also gave us something back.”

“The Nematon made you into this?” Malia asks, gesturing at Allison in a swooping motion. She looks wary, shuffling in her place as if to move further away from Allison. She’s already in the kitchen, so it’s not like there’s anywhere farther for her to go.

“Derek, has anything major happened to you, after that night?” Allison asks.

He nods, only speaks after Stiles elbows him and motions to Allison. “The full shift; I evolved,” he says.

Allison nods, then looks at Lydia.

“My voice,” Lydia replies unprompted. “It’s different, more powerful...potent.”

Scott raises an eyebrow at her.

“And she can perform magic,” Kira adds. “Druidic magic.”

“I can start fires with my mind, if anyone gives a shit,” Stiles speaks up from his corner of the room next to Derek. “I’m pretty much pissing magic, at this point—”

“And he had a baby,” Cora suggests drolly. “In case anyone forgot.”

Stiles lunges at her but Derek gets a hold of his collar, pulling him back even as Stiles nearly snarls at Cora and his hands twitch. Something unsaid goes between them as they scowl at each other. Derek gently brushes a hand down Stiles’ side, drawing him away from Cora and back towards the sofa. Stiles doesn’t sit back down until Derek takes his hand and guides him down. Stiles is whispering harshly at Derek, mouth an angry slash on his face and eyes glinting in the dark. Allison can’t look away.

“And just where did you learn all this?” Deaton asks, speaking over Stiles. “I don’t imagine there are too many libraries in purgatory.”

She doesn’t have to answer. Instead, Derek makes eye contact with her and she knows he understands what she can’t say.

“I made a friend,” she says. Her heart skips and she knows Derek can hear it. Even if her voice wasn’t seconds from breaking, even if her face wasn’t giving her away: he’d hear it in her the stutter of her heart. “Laura Hale.”

The room erupts in noise, but Derek and Allison are quiet.  
\---

“You still smell like her,” Derek tells her, handing her sheets and a clean towel. “I don’t know how, but you do.”

Allison takes the bedding from him and their fingers brush. Derek shudders and his eyes flash blue, Allison shrugs. It keeps happening with all the shifters and she has to play it off or else she’ll start laughing. Or crying. Yesterday, Malia had passed by her in the hallway, barely brushing arms. As soon as their arms had touched, Malia had shifted and rounded on her. Allison had reacted in kind, leaping backward and somehow ended up springing forward from the shadow behind the couch. It had taken Stiles and Scott two hours to calm Malia down enough to shift back; Derek and Lydia had chased Allison down into the preserve and convinced her to come back in four.

She turns from Derek, but doesn’t move to close the door. Derek steps into the room, sitting down in the chair at the vanity. She lets him stew for a bit, lets him come up with his own questions.

“Can you...is she okay?” he asks after a few minutes of quiet.

Allison nods, sits down on the bed to face him.

“She’s fine. She asked me the same thing about you.”

“And what’d you tell her?” he winces.

She shrugs again, answers, “The truth.”

Derek grimaces. The bolt on the front door turns and they both turn to listen. There’s the jingling of keys and then off-key whistling that Allison barely recognizes as a Neil Diamond song. The fridge opens and then Stiles yells out, “Home.”

“Pizza in the oven,” Derek calls back.

“It’s your turn to change the baby,” Stiles calls back. There’s a quiet whuffing sound from downstairs and then a loud cry as the baby reacts to something Stiles does. “Let me feed him and then this nightmare is yours.”

Her dad’s apartment only has one bed and the pullout was actually starting to sag too much for anyone to actually sleep on it. There’s a truce between Chris and Derek, now; history she’s missed and will never be able to guess at. Derek offered his condo to her without a second thought and she’s still taken aback by his easy acceptance into his space. The place is less Derek’s, and more Derek and Stiles’. It’s nice, but Allison is still restless. She’s ashamed to admit she’s jealous of them. She wants the easy intimacy between them and the home they’ve built out of scars and hard-fought trust.

Stiles has been trying to act somewhat normally since Allison came to stay with them. They don’t talk about his absence from the apartment during the first few days, his avoidance. She’s not in the same room as baby Eliot without Stiles in there to watch them both. She can’t fault him for that when she looks like something that crawled out from under Eliot’s bed. She swallows the sting and keeps her eyes on the wall, or the ground, or Derek.

Derek rolls his eyes at something Stiles says and makes his way to the door. Before he can leave, before she can lose her nerve, Allison clears her throat. He stops, looks at her over his shoulder.

“Are you guys okay, then?” she says cautiously. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I know you guys got into it a few days ago.”

“We’re fine,” Derek says. “Stiles is a first time parent: he’s equal parts ruthless and paranoid. Both of us are on edge and we shouldn’t have put you in the middle of it.”

“I can stay with my dad, really. The foldout isn’t even that uncomfortable,” she presses. “I don’t want to cause any trouble. Nothing should have to change because of me.”

Derek shakes his head and snorts. “You literally came back from the dead,” he deadpans. “I think ‘change’ and ‘trouble’ are understatements.”

Allison frowns, picks at the seam of the bedspread.

“Allison,” Derek starts again. She looks up at him and almost laughs at how uncomfortable he looks. “Things are going to work themselves out—because they have to. You’re supposed to be here, trouble or not.”

It almost makes Allison laugh, seeing Derek so genuinely optimistic.

“You guys are going to be really good dads,” she says. It might ruin the moment a little, but she smiles anyway. The moment lingers and Derek nods, shoves his hands in his pockets.

“I’m going back for her,” she says quietly. She hopes he can hear it as a promise, from her words or her heartbeat. “Whatever I have to do, I’m not leaving her there.”

Derek’s brows furrow, confused at the abrupt change in topic. “Why? What does she matter to you?”

There’s nothing spiteful or disdainful about the question, only genuine concern. Derek, in that moment, is just Laura’s little brother. Allison gets up and places a hand on Derek’s, where it rests on the door. He doesn’t shy away from her touch, doesn’t even flinch.

“Everything,” she responds. “Laura’s everything, Derek.”

Whatever he sees in her face, he gets it. Derek places a hand on her shoulder and the look on his face when he leaves is hopeful, thankful even. Allison chuckles a little when she realizes she’d had to go to hell and back, almost literally, for her and Derek Hale to come to an agreement on something.  
\---

Allison shows up at Deaton’s a week later to the day. Derek parks the car in the front and checks to make sure the Animal Hospital is empty. He flips the open signed over to ‘Closed’ and guides Allison inside, where Deaton lifts the mountain ash barrier so they can pass through. Scott is cleaning something up in the back and he drops the cleaning bottle and rag to hug her. There’s another boy behind him, all baby-blues and young-faced that she recognizes from the night Deaton came over.

“This is Liam,” Scott says, introducing him the same way a new mom introduces a newborn. “He’s my beta.”

Liam smiles and waves awkwardly. She smiles back at both of them, feels strange to be meeting people who know her by an obituary in the town paper and from stories told by people she hasn’t seen in years. Deaton comes back then, saving her from having to exchange any polite conversation.

“I assume you’re here to learn about your new form,” Deaton says, eying her warily. “Your shift has manifested, I presume?”

“Shift,” Liam repeats. “Like a werewolf shift?”

Allison’s brows draw together and she looks at her hands. Liam eyes her warily, taking note of all the things that obviously mark her as inhuman. She remembers the inky black bleeding into her skin, the feeling of being swallowed up by a swirling darkness. He licks her lips and laughs when Liam’s eyes widen in astonishment.

“Like a shadow,” she says.

“Precisely,” Deaton confirms. “There are many facets of your new abilities, leading to your true form. These will manifest later, as you become more comfortable in your abilities and as your control solidifies. Shall we begin?”

“When you say true form,” Allison clears her throat, suddenly nervous. “Does that mean that…the black skin and the claws? Is that what the Shadow really looks like?”

Scott swings up onto the examination table, pats the spot next to him for Liam to take up. Liam scrambles up, eager to put distance between himself and Allison. Derek pulls up a chair from the front and sit down next to Liam. Together, they watch as Deaton pulls out a few dusty tomes from his office and lays them out on the counter.

“Yes. Usually, from what I’ve read, a Shadow Person has a preferred form: either the Shadow or a secondary form. This secondary form can anthropomorphic, animal, or even non-corporeal.”

Scott’s eyes widen in excitement, “Could Allison turn into like, a black cloud?”

Allison smiles, “Or a wolf?”

“That may be possible in the future, but your shift has already selected a secondary form,” he gestures at Allison. “The reason you appear as you do before us is because you, consciously or subconsciously, have chosen to remain human-like in your secondary form. Hence, the resemblance to your seventeen-year-old self.”

“So Allison’s ‘shift’ would reveal her true form,” Derek surmises. “She would shift into a Shadow Person form?”

“More or less. Like with werewolves, the shift is tied to an anchor,” Deaton explains, turning back to face Allison. “Your first manifestation was triggered by a spell, the work of a Druid. But, as you can imagine, relying on a Druid to cast this spell whenever your true form is needed is both inefficient and unnecessary. Mastering your control and connecting with your anchor is essential to manipulating your new abilities.”

Laura would be having a field day.

“Is Lydia a banshee and a Druid?” Allison asks, looking over one of the books on the counter. It’s written in a language she doesn’t recognize, but she feels like the ability to read it is buried beneath her skin. She scratches at her arms, trying to quell the sudden itchiness.

“Uh, yeah,” Scott answers stiltedly. “Typical, um, overachieving Lydia, right?”

She turns when she hears the panic in his voice, sees his eyes trained on her hands. Under her fingernails, her skin has turned black. It looks like ink bleeding onto a page, but when she reaches out to try to coax it further it disappears. Liam breathes out a sigh of relief when the black slips away.

“Damn it,” she seethes.

“Was that it?” Liam asks. He looks and sounds horrified. “Holy shit, was that it?”

Scott pats his shoulder as Deaton comes around to pick up her arm, turning it over. There are no marks, no signs her skin had ever changed. She looks the same ashy grey as before.

“That was a remarkable first effort, Allison,” he assures her. “I was not expecting you to connect so readily. Do you already know the basis of your anchor?”

She glances over at Scott, who is smiling warmly at her. She remembers a time when she was his and grieves for the people they used to be. Wonders that she has a second chance to be someone new.

“Yes,” she says, looking away from Scott. “She was there when I left purgatory. I’m going back for her.”

Derek glances between Allison and Scott, appraising the distance between them. Deaton hums. He nods and pulls up chairs for Allison and himself. Scott smiles at her and slaps Liam on the shoulder, looking contemplative.

“We’re going to take off, leave you guys to practice,” he says. “Call me if you need anything.”

Allison feels like there’s more to say, but Scott can’t be a priority right now. She nods and turns to face Deaton, fingers prickling and seeping into a pitch black.

“Is there more than just the, um, shadow jumping?” she asks Deaton, leaning forward to rest her elbows on her knees. Deaton seems amused at her terminology, but he doesn’t correct her.

“More?” he asks.

“Abilities,” she clarifies. “Can I do more than just appear in purgatory? It feels like there’s more…potential. Or something.”

Deaton glances at a leather-bound book with a glossy, black cover. Allison follows his gaze and scoops the book up. The sharp, angular lettering clears as she runs a finger over the surface. It’s some kind of journal or history text. The title reads, Pitch Manifestation, and it’s not very thick but the pages are covered in a dense scrawl. Deaton seems impressed with her but Allison has no idea what she’s done.

“That tome was written by one of the first of your kind,” he explains. “A family of shadow people, the Méchante clan.”

“You’re telling me there was a family of shadow shifters whose surname is literally French for wicked?” Allison snorts.

“You talk a lot of shit for a werewolf hunter whose last name is literally silver,” Derek snaps.

Allison turns to glare at him.

“Yes, Ms. Argent,” Deaton responds, smiling. “That would seem to be the case.”

Pot, kettle: point taken.

“As you will read, there are a myriad of abilities and manipulations that accompany shadow-shifting,” Deaton continues. “It would seem the shifter’s capabilities depend on their shape, potential, and manner of transformation. You were not a born shifter, as the shift resulted from dark druidic magic and the interference of an organic magical conduit. Additionally, you manifested your form travelling from purgatory. These circumstances will ultimately shape your power and your abilities.”

“I was grey in purgatory,” Allison corrects. “My mouth and hands…when I woke up I looked like that.”

“Then, it may be that your form needed a catalyst to manifest. It could be,” Deaton pauses. “Your death may have been the triggering mechanism your shadow needed to appear.”

It’s a lot of information to digest, but Allison gets the gist of it. The initial itching in her hand returns and she focuses on her hands, narrows that focus to purgatory. Laura. Her father. When she opens her eyes, she can feel her eyes flash and her fingers blacken again. She breathes out and is relieved to find her hands stay a pitch black, fingertips narrowing into sharp points.

“Excellent control,” Deaton notes. “Your focus is impressive.”

Allison imagines the color spreading, sees it in her mind and tries to grasp the swirling coldness in her chest. Inhaling deeply, she imagines she’s drawing the shadow inward as she draws the cold out of herself. When she exhales and glances down, she can see the entirety of her limbs have blackened.

“Is this the final form you were talking about?” she wonders aloud. Her skin feels the same, if a few degrees colder. Derek shivers in his seat and Allison grins.

Deaton stands and appraises her, beckoning her to stand and hold up her arms palms facing upwards. He doesn’t touch her, but he studies her closely.

“It would appear this is equivalent to a werewolf’s beta shift,” he concludes, brows drawing together. “A half-shift, if you will. What else can you feel? Hear? Smell?”

Allison closes her eyes, breathes in again. She can’t smell anything, but her hearing clears the more she concentrates. It reminds her of the popping in her ears when coming down from the mountains. There’s a soft pop, and then she can hear the wet glub-glub of Derek’s increasing heartbeat and the ticking of a desk clock at the front desk. There’s a wet dripping that sounds like it’s coming from a water bottle in an animal cage down the double doors to her left. Faintly, there’s the sound of cars passing down the highway.

“No smell,” she details. “But I can hear more clearly. I don’t feel anything, other than a little cold.”

She feels Derek come closer and offer her his hand, hesitantly as if at Deaton’s suggestion. She takes it and gasps when her palm connects with his wrist. Behind her closed eyelids, a soft orange glow flares. It’s accompanied by a fluttering warmth in her palm, a slight vibration she can feel on her skin. She smiles at the sensation.

“I can see something,” she laughs at her own wonder. “I don’t know how to describe it. You look like a flame, maybe. Or like I’m seeing you through an infrared lens.”

“What color do you see, Allison?”

“Orange. A deep orange color,” she replies. She lets go of Derek and although the warmth disappears, when she opens her eyes she can still see the color from before.

“That,” Deaton intones, “is interesting.”

Allison looks at Derek again, concentrating on the shimmery glow. It flickers in his gut, not quite like flame. It reminds her of the mist in purgatory, only more condensed and more alive. When Derek’s flashes his eyes, the color intensifies.

She can feel her left eye twitch. “I can see your magic?”

Derek slips further into his shift and the orange color seeps outward, picking up hues of gold and amber. The color matches the amber glow of his eyes.

Deaton walks to the counter and picks up two large books, gently wiping dust off their cover. He hands them to Allison with a careful grin. Distracted, the Shadow slips from her arms and her fingers shrink down into familiar soft, rounded nails.

“You can see auras, Allison,” he corrects her. “I believe you can identify the auras of the supernatural.”

Later, sitting in Derek’s car, Allison examines her fingers. She manages to pull up the familiar veil over eyes without slipping into the rest of her shift. When she examines her own body, tries to search out the same warm glow she’d seen in Derek, all she sees is black.  
\---

“You did what?” her dad asks, squinting at her.

Bringing her legs up underneath her, she makes herself comfortable on an armchair in his living room. She can’t really stomach heavy foods, but she’s sipping at her coffee and snacking on pieces of chocolate. Chris continues to squint but he hands her another bar of dark chocolate as she finishes the one in her hands.

“I practiced my shift,” she replies, munching. “Deaton says I show a lot of promise as a shifter.”

Chris squirms in his seat but nods in contemplation, so Allison knows he’s taking her seriously. She reaches out and sets a tentative hand on her dad’s, hoping to bring him out of whatever world he’d slipped into since she’d spoken.

“Like a wolf?”

“Kind of. Smaller, darker, no fur. More like a boogeyman, than anything.”

Her dad stares balefully at the ceiling.

“I know this is…really hard for you,” she says. “It’s a big adjustment and there’s so much happening. But I just wanted to say that I really love you, dad. And whatever I can do to make this easier, I’ll do it.”

Chris wraps an arm around her and hugs her tight. Allison tips her forehead to his chest and takes a breath, smelling the familiar cologne and gunpowder scent she’s always associated with her dad. As he rubs her back, she feels safe and small again; it’s a much-needed comfort in the face of all the chaos of the last few days.

“There’s nothing you need to make up for, Allison,” he assures her. “We’ll all doing what we need to do to get through this.”

“But I’m not even human anymore. How do we just cope with that?”

In purgatory, it was one thing to just accept what and where she was. For one, there had been Laura- a thought that sends a sharp wave of hurt to her gut. Secondly, for all that there was no time in purgatory, there had been a sort of finality in being dead. When she’d come to, naked and black-fingered in the preserve, it’d been as if all the pain and confusion from her first week in purgatory had come rushing back. On top of that, to find out she was a shifter. And to realize there were years she could never get back, memories and stories she would never be a part of because she was never meant to come back: it was almost too much to stomach.

“We do it one step at a time,” Chris sighs. “Honestly, kid, I’m just glad you’re here. Everything else takes a backseat when I can see you and know you’re okay.”

Allison sits up and sniffs, wiping at her nose and eyes.

“Even if I look like a shadow demon from the black lagoon?” she sniffles.

Chris smiles and squeezes her shoulder, “You’re my shadow demon, okay?”

Allison laughs wetly and leans into the hug, awkward and tense as it may be. It’s her dad and she’ll take what she can get.

“I have to talk to Scott,” she says after a few minutes. “I want to do something with this. I want to do more than just hide out in Derek’s condo or your apartment forever.”

Her dad’s quiet, but she has to bring up Laura as carefully as she can. There’s only one chance at convincing her dad and this is it. If she plays her cards right, she can start bringing him around to the idea now. In a few months, when she has complete control of her shift and can successfully start jumping planes, he may just be agreeable enough not to stop her.

“Dad,” she carefully starts. “If I left someone behind…”

Her dad shifts to stare at her.

“Not just anyone. If it was someone important…someone I shouldn’t have ever had to leave behind. I need to know if you would you let me go back for them. If you say no, I’ll—I won’t try, I promise.”

The words came out in a croak, throat aching with their weight. But her father had already lost her once, had only just gotten her back. There was no way Allison could bring herself to be so unfair as to make him lose her again. If he said no, she wouldn’t go. She wouldn’t even try.

“But if you can, somehow, be okay with this- I’d like to try. It’s important that I at least try to bring her back, too.”

Her dad takes him arm back from its place around her. He leans back, rubbing his face with his hands.

“Is it safe?” he asks. His eyes aren’t bloodshot or pained. He looks older, tired. But he finally looks at peace; Allison may have underestimated her father’s compassion. It’s a nice thing to be surprised by. “Is it a sure thing? Because this isn’t something I’m willing to gamble with. I need more than a maybe here, Allison.”

“I don’t know,” she answers, as honest as she can be.

Chris blows out a sharp breath and shakes his head. “You’ll do what you need to, I know that. But I appreciate the transparency,” he says, eyes far away. “Let’s think on this, be smart about it. You practice your…”

“Shift,” she fills in for him when he trails off.

“That,” he agrees. “Talk to Scott and Deaton. Derek, maybe. I’ll see if I can get ahold of one of my contacts, see if they know anything we don’t. And then we’ll see what you’re capable of, what’s within the realm of possibility. Or realms, I guess.”

She nods, the smallest burst of anxious excitement blooming in her gut. Laura.

“Thank you,” she says.

“We both know you don’t need to thank me,” her dad says, his smile sad and wan. “You haven’t needed my permission for a while.”

Allison leans into his side, eyes heavy and heart full. “Thanks for giving it, anyway. Thanks for trusting me to come back.”

Her father wraps an arm around her and settles her into the curve of his shoulder, kisses the top of her head. The certainty in his affection, the unabashed love from her dad warms even the coldest shards of darkness within her.  
\---

“What do I look like?” she asks Stiles when they’re both at home on a cold, damp Thursday. He hasn’t stopped avoiding her when they’re alone, seeking out Derek or Lydia when they’re with friends. She figures this is the safest conversation to start with. He has the baby on his lap, gurgling and giggling; he’s a beautiful little boy, chubby-cheeked and dark-haired. Scott says Stiles named him after a poet Stiles researched for his undergrad thesis; Derek is quiet about the baby, but sometimes he can’t hide the joy, small and wondrous, in his face when sees his son. Eliot gurgles every now and again, eyes flashing amber before slipping back into baby blues. He’s a happy baby and he hardly cries, which the Sherriff says he gets from Stiles. He looks at Stiles like the world begins and ends with his face, which he probably gets from Derek.

“Like, right now?” Stiles won’t face her, eyes trained on the baby’s hands and pointedly ignoring her face. “The same mostly. Your mouth is black and your hands look…stained, I guess? You’re not so scary-looking, considering what we’ve all seen.”

Allison nods; she knows this.

“I mean when I shift,” she prods. “No one wants to tell me.”

Not even Derek. Allison watches as Stiles gnaws at the corner of his upper lip, a nervous tic he’s picked up sometime over the years, and peels pieces of his cuticle with his teeth until he starts to bleed. Allison frowns when she realizes she doesn’t remember this about him. Glancing at him, she’s startled to see he’s staring straight at her. They don’t break eye contact.

“You look terrifying,” he replies, voice steady and blank. “Have you ever seen ink spread on wet paper? Because it’s almost exactly like that. The black from your fingers crawls up your arms and legs, your eyes burn white, and your teeth elongate into fangs. All of your teeth.”

Allison is taken aback by his honesty. She wasn’t expecting such a detailed answer; she gets where Stiles is coming from, understands everyone’s hesitance to help her with her shift. She sounds like every bedtime story of the boogeyman or monster under the bed she’s ever heard. They stare at each other until Eliot shrieks, arms flailing and slapping at Stiles’ hands. Stiles looks back at his son, mouth melting into a tired grin, lines around his eyes crinkling. He kisses the baby’s head.

“That sounds terrifying,” she agrees. “It’s a miracle Derek and Deaton can stomach seeing it.”

Stiles frowns. Allison tries to smile but it feels forced in the face of Stiles’ discomfort. She doesn’t know how to fix whatever’s been broken between them. While they’d never been particularly close, they’ve always been pack. Friends, at least.

“I’m sorry,” Stiles blurts. “That you’re…like this now. I am.”

“Stiles, what—”

“I know everyone is thinking it,” he snaps bitterly. “I don’t need you to say they’re not.”

Sensing Stiles’ growing discomfort, Eliot’s lips start to tremble as he makes increasingly distressed whining noises into Stiles’ face. Stiles turns away from Allison and picks him up to tuck his head in the crook of his neck, wiping at his little scrunched face and cooing until Eliot quiets down.

“This is all my fault,” he seethes, wiping the baby’s nose with his shirt. “God, this never—fuck.”

Allison hesitates for the briefest second before she places a hand on his shoulder. She rubs his arm and waits him out, ready for whatever he’s about to say. She hasn’t been this close to either Stiles or the baby, so she makes sure to move slowly and she never touches Eliot.

“I’m sorry for a lot of things,” Stiles mutters. Eliot’s little mouth makes a sad moue as he hiccups, breath catching in his throat, and Stiles scrambles to stop the cry before it happens. Allison, meanwhile, keeps trying to understand what exactly Stiles is trying to say.

“I don’t know…what do you have to apologize for? You and Derek have let me move into your house after I came back from the dead. Into your home, where you’re raising a baby. You hardly owe me—”

“Stiles.”

He’s gone completely still next to her, mouth an angry slash across his face. He has Eliot pressed to his chest, whether for his own comfort or Eliot’s she doesn’t know. It suddenly becomes clear that the goofy boy from high school is gone, long grown into someone defensive and weary. She tries to pry one of his hands away from the baby’s back but the look he shoots her is venomous. He takes a moment to collect himself, patting at Eliot’ back and rubbing small circles into his onesie until the baby quiets.

He gets up from the couch and walks the baby to the nursery, rocking and bouncing him. Allison waits for him to come back, breathing into her hands and counting her breaths. She’s trying to keep her shift under control, eyeing the black as it ebbs and flows on her skin. When Stiles comes back a few minutes later, he has the baby monitor in one hand and the other hangs, empty, by his side. 

“Stiles, it wasn’t your fault,” she pleads, voice a rasp. “I don’t know what anyone has ever said, but it doesn’t matter. Fuck, it could’ve been any one of us. Do you hear me? It could’ve been me or Lydia. It could’ve been Isaac or—”

“But it was me, Allison, do you get that? It could’ve been anyone, but it was me. Okay? Me. I killed you,” he snarls, voice rising until he remembers Eliot is down the hall. “I remember how it felt, every second of it. I remember that I liked it. And now I know that you were in fucking purgatory for five years because I made you into some shadow demon. How do I stomach that? How is that even remotely okay?”

He has his breathing under control, but he still sounds hysterical. Allison drops her hands from her mouth to the pillow next to her, gripping the soft coverlet tightly. She pulls her half-shift up and over, her eyes burning white and her sharp nails digging into the cotton.

“Stiles,” she calls to him. “Look at me.”

Slowly, painfully slow, Stiles looks at her face. When his glance passes over her mouth, he sets his jaw and closes his eyes briefly. When he opens them again, he holds her gaze and trembles ever so softly. Allison looks into him, sees the bright burning of his magic inside of him. She blows a deep breath out and slips the shift away.

“I’m here; I’m powerful and alive. I’m not a monster,” her voice breaks under the weight of the heartbreak in her throat, “and neither are you.”

Stiles’ face collapses and his body follows, almost catching Allison by surprise. She wants to reach out and hold him, but again…they’d never been particularly close. Now, here, they couldn’t be farther apart.

“I don’t know if you believe it yet,” she whispers. She tucks away the sharp-tipped nails of her fingers into her palms. “But I promise: I’m not going to hurt you. Or Eliot. Or Derek. Anyone.”

Stiles yanks away from her, eyes narrowed.

“What?”

She brushes the wetness from her own eyes and shakes her head.

“The way you watched me in the beginning, the way you still do; how you won’t leave Eliot in the same room with me unless you’re there too. I know you don’t…trust me. And that’s okay,” she says, begging him to understand how much she gets it. “I know how I look.”

“I’m not going to apologize for that,” Stiles says, carefully quiet and calm. “And you can’t promise me that you won’t hurt anyone. You don’t even have control over your shift yet and we still don’t know what it all means.”

He scoots closer to her, turns to look her full in the face. He places the baby monitor between his knees and chews at his lips, carefully going over something in his head before he speaks.

“I was afraid of you, at first. I didn’t know what you were, if you were really Allison or just something with her face. It was like I saw you and just remembered all over again. I didn’t want you anywhere Eliot and I didn’t come stay with you because I was fucking terrified,” he explains. “And I won’t apologize for that because he’s my kid, Allison. My kid. I can’t take any chances with him. And then Derek just threw himself into being your guard dog and I was hurt. And I was so fucking angry with him because I needed him here. We both needed him and he just refused to come home.”

Allison hangs her head, shoulders stiff with unease. “It wasn’t like that, Stiles. You know it wasn’t.”

He scoffs, rolls eyes at her. “I wasn’t worried about that. I was just angry that we weren’t his highest priority. Or, I felt like we weren’t. And I’m still mad at him, but I’m mostly over it. I get it. He told me about Laura.”

Allison’s head shoots up. It’s been a while since she’s heard anyone say her name and her stomach tightens with the sound of it. Stiles’ lips quirk up at their corners and he shrugs at her.

“And then, after Deaton came and talked to us, I was so fucking furious. And still scared, but for a different reason. I remember how everyone was in the beginning. No anchor, no control. I felt like we invited a timebomb into our home. And I get that the learning curve is a little steep, but I just couldn’t take any chances. Derek thinks I used Eliot as a crutch and maybe I did a little bit, but I just…I don’t want to leave him alone ever. I barely let my dad and Cora leave with him, and they’re related to Eliot.”

Allison nods, rubs her thumb across her wrist. They both settle, Stiles scooting away from her as he sniffles, wiping at his nose with his sleeve.

“We’ve been through some shit, Allison. All of us. And Derek and I? I don’t think we’ve ever planned further than six months into the future. We got so used to living day to day, just taking what we could when we could. And in all the plans we’d pulled out of our asses, none of them ever included raising a kid. How could they? How could you bring a baby into a world like this?” Stiles licks his lips, breathes out again. His fingers trace over the raised skin on his throat, absentmindedly scratching at shiny skin. “People like us? We don’t nurture, we have too much blood on our hands. We don’t yield: we’re too brittle, too hard.”

He smiles weakly, the left side of his mouth drooping a little. She eyes the scar without trying to seem too obvious, but he must see it anyway. He brings a hand up to trace the harsh line of it, eyes glazing over.

“When I had Eliot, I shut down hard. I had to; I couldn’t be with him and in the frontlines of whatever bullshit crusade Derek and Scott were leading that day. And I didn’t know how not to do that, you know? It’s not like I’m some kind of a fire mage: I’m literally a weapon of mass destruction. I have no magic skills whatsoever, I’m just an overflowing cup. I’m just—”

“A timebomb,” she finishes after his eyes harden and his voice cuts out.

Stiles licks his lips, glances at her before staring out into the empty kitchen.

“So, I had to learn how to be gentle and loving and selfless; I had to figure out how to protect people I love, while taking care of me too. Even with Derek. I remember feeling like if he burned, Jesus, I was going to have to follow him into the fucking flames. But now, we had something more permanent than ourselves and we’d never been more at a complete fucking loss. I don’t know if we can go back to how we were, after everything. Some things change you too much, too deeply, for you to try and live like you’re the same person.”

“Stiles,” Allison interrupts.

“No, I have to,” he says. “When I look at you, I’m trying not to see a monster. And the shitty part is: I know what that’s like. I know, I get it—I just don’t always know how to be around you. I’ve felt so guilty for so long and I don’t know that I’ll ever not carry that with me. I don’t know that I deserve to be free from that, forgiveness be damned. And where I go, Eliot goes. So, poor kid just got roped into my pity party. I’m a good dad like that.”

Allison sighs. She’s not going to get anywhere tonight trying to get Stiles to back down from this. She doesn’t follow him into Eliot’s room when he leaves, a few minutes into the pained silence between them. She sits on the couch, quiet, until long after the sun slips into the hills.  
\---

Allison comes out of the conversations with her father and Stiles hell-bent on practicing her shift. She finishes Pitch Manifestation in three days, surrendering it to Lydia so that addendums can be made to the Argent-McCall bestiary. By the time Lydia returns the book to her, Allison’s finishing up the other stack Deaton’s given her. Three weeks later, she can also slip the pitch onto her skin and flick her hearing on and off. The aura identification is a little trickier, but only in that Allison doesn't really have baselines for anything. Allison and Lydia start making a key, color-coded for various auras and creatures. Scott is delighted to hear his aura is a warm orchid color; Stiles is absolutely devastated to hear his glows neon yellow in Allison’s half-shift.

Practice trials of Allison’s full shift start a month after she appeared in Beacon Hills.

The first time she shifts into her shadow form, she underestimates her speed and springs from the shadow at the foot of Derek’s staircase. Stiles screams and falls backwards down the stairs, waking up Eliot in his room down the hall, and they both end up in tears. She still feels bad about that.

The second time, she shifts in her sleep during a nightmare. A loud, guttural scream tears from her throat and then she’s bursting into purgatory in a cloud of swirling black mist. She’s caught so off guard, she flings herself backwards and lands back inside the apartment with a heavy thud. Derek almost drops the laundry basket when he sees her, still letting off tendrils of black smoke.

“It worked,” she gasps, eyes still wet and puffy. “I was there.”

Derek kneels down next to her, helps her up with his free hand. She’s breathing hard and hasn’t lost all of her color. Her legs are still black from the knees down and her teeth feel colder, sharper at their points. She pricks her bottom lip on the corner of a tooth, surprised at the taste of copper that bursts on her tongue.

“You’ll get better,” Derek assures her with flashing eyes. She feels her eyes flash black in return.

She believes him.  
\---

Which is probably why it all goes to shit a week later. Derek vaults into the kitchen on a quiet Tuesday afternoon, half-shifted and blood-soaked.

“Where’s Stiles?” he demands, eyes wide and glowing blue. “Where’s the baby?”

Allison sets the book she was reading down with trembling hands. It’s been a while since she’s had to work in a crisis and she’s trying to keep her head.

“Stiles took Eliot out to the market,” she says. “Derek, what’s wrong? Where—what happened?”

Derek’s face pales and he nods to himself. Scott comes skidding in through the front door, panting and equally as bloody. He walks straight into the back of the apartment, shuffling through things. Derek is making panicked, wheezing noises and he face contorts in and out of his beta shift. Scott comes barreling into the room, a lump wrapped in a blanket in his left hand.

“Derek,” he snaps. “He’ll be fine. It’s fine, I need you to snap out it.”

Derek snarls.

“Derek, we need you here,” Scott pleads, edging towards Derek.

Derek shoulders him out of the way and tears out of the apartment. Scott calls after him, leaning out of the front doorway but he doesn’t hear anything in response. It’s not until he comes back into the front hall that Allison sees the panic on his face.

“What in the hell is happening, Scott?” Allison demands.

Scott tosses her a hooded sweatshirt and guides her by the elbow out of the apartment, talking as they hurry down the stairs.

“Stiles went MIA about two hours ago,” he explains, voice shaky. “John hasn’t seen him since this morning, when he dropped Eliot off. He said Stiles looked...something was off.”

“But it’s only been two hours,” Allison reasons. “He could be at Vons, for all we know. I mean, why are we all on DEFCON 5?”

Allison does slip on the sweatshirt without question and draws the hood over her head as they step into the parking lot. Scott jumps into a beat up sedan and Allison slides into the passenger seat. Her hands dig into the seat as he careens out of the lot, skidding in the direction of the preserve. 

“Derek and I caught a scent while we were out looking for him,” he explains to her. His eyes are frenzied though his voice remains cold and removed. “Aconite, gunpowder, silver. We think it might be a splinter group of hunters from the Carmichael clan. There’s some bad blood between them and Stiles.”

He turns left, running a red light and wincing as he looks back at the intersection in his rearview.

“I don’t know how much you’ve heard, but Stiles isn’t as stable as we’d all like. On any given day, he’s got a surplus of raw energy inside him, side effect of the nog—thing that was in him being ripped out. Sometimes, he needs to let it all out and he finds constructive ways of doing that. Lydia helps, so does Derek. But sometimes, he can’t. Or won’t. And it just builds up until he can’t take it anymore. Or until something sets it off.”

He’s explaining this going thirty over the speed limit, a trail of burnt rubber and panic following him.

“About a year ago, we had some issues with some of the Carmichael guys,” Scott continues, changing lanes to go around a minivan. “They said one of their contacts had reported a bounty on an omega woman in the beacon hills preserve and they wanted a free pass to hunt her. Derek and I said no, but we offered to get her ourselves, talk to her first and see if she was even in there. They weren’t having it. So, a few of them go after Lydia to try to scare us into doing things their way. Shit hits the fan pretty quick after that. Stiles is less ‘three strikes, you’re out’ and more ‘if you even try to swing’. When they drew first blood, Stiles…he lost it. With Lydia there, it was like a nuke. The shifters barely came back, the humans didn’t. Took down a few Carmichael soldiers, including their oldest son, Matteus. It was brutal. Carmichaels left at first light, morning after, with pieces of their son in a body bag.”

He swerves left and onto a side road, still paved but with gravel loose enough to be kicked up into sprays of dirt behind the tires. They pull off onto a dirt road and Scott parks, jerking the keys out of the ignition and tucking the keys into the pocket of his jacket. Allison climbs out of the car, following him into the treeline. She’s half expecting to see the opaque, dark mist swirling above the treetops and shivers at the thought. Scott glances back at her, mouth twitching and pulling down at the corners. He takes a second to scent the incoming breeze, coming from the north if the shaking of the leaves is any indication. He stills, a growl rolling from the back of his throat.

“If you have a handle on your shadow jumping thing,” Scott tells her, his eyes glowing crimson. “Now would be a good time for it.”

Allison isn’t quite ready for this, she can feel it. But she also feels the buzzing in her limbs, muscles taut with adrenaline; the static in her bones creeps through, the feeling bubbling in her skin as the shadow seeps down, down into her fingertips. It’s now or never, she decides. In a handful of blinks, the film melts into place over her eyes and she can see Scott glowing the familiar warm, fuchsia. It’s hard to maintain, her eyesight coming and going in flashes of light. She can see handfuls of green dots further up, blinking into of view before fuzzing out at the edge of her vision. In the seconds it takes her to adjust, Scott has morphed into his alpha shift and is tensing to spring. At her nod, he lumbers forward towards the green blips in the trees.

Allison is running, and then she leaping from out the shadows in the trees. As the daylight weakens in the dense trees, her jumps are quicker, over longer distances. It’s distracting, keeping up from staying with Scott as she springs from shadow to shadow towards the group. She can hear them as she draws closer, the sounds of struggle and whispered clamoring. She trips just before she hears the furious roar of a shifter, twisting into the slight crack of a shadow to her left and before she knows it, she’s twisting out of a gap between two elms and smashing into a body. He thuds to the floor and Allison crouches down, looking up at a group of humans. The terror is acrid in her nose, pungent and overwhelming. She has a split second to take in the rest of them, maybe six in all not including the man she’d knocked out, before Scott comes barreling into the fray.

“Animal, have your demon stand down,” a stocky, blonde man commanded. “We came here, in good will; we want to negotiate.”

Allison bares her teeth, and pulls the film back under her eyelids. Her nails stretch into black points as she speaks, “I am not a demon.”

Scott brushes by her as he walks to the man, hands out in front of himself. His claws are gone. “Where is Stiles?” he asks. “I want to know he’s safe before I hear you guys out.”

There’s a muffled snarl and Allison snaps her head to look westward, where she can see a brown tarp wriggling, something struggling underneath. She meets Scott’s eyes and takes a step toward the tarp. The hunter to her right clicks the hammer back on his handgun, aiming at her head. She stops.

“Derek,” she whispers. The thrashing from under the tarp stops.

“And my beta,” Scott says calmly, hands out to placate both the blonde and the man with his gun on Allison. “Paul, I just want my pack members.”

“Your pack,” the blonde, Paul, hisses, “Has taken down twelve of my clan, now. What kind of alpha lets his betas go unchecked? What kind of animals are you trying to keep on leashes, McCall?”

Scott winces. “Your matriarch and I already came to terms. Blood for blood, it was settled and you know that,” he says evenly. “Matteus almost killed my druid; he and his men paid the price for spilling druidic blood. Your mother understood that, Paul, she did the right thing. It’s your turn to do the same.”

“Don’t lecture me about my mother or my clan,” Paul says evenly. His hand rests on the holster at his hip. “She denied us revenge; she denied a father justice. Now, we’ve come for retribution. Give us your fire mage, and we’ll give you back your beta. We didn’t touch the infant mutant or the Sheriff. We’re being more than fair.”

A woman slips the tarp off Derek, revealing him in his full alpha shift. She spits at him, dragging him over towards them by the thick, lavender rope lead that wraps around his neck. He drops down in front of Scott, the woman holding the rope taut behind him.

Paul nods to another man behind him and he shoves a hooded man on his knees towards the group. He falls forward with a grunt at Paul’s feet, shivering with his wheezing breaths. Paul reaches down, eyes not leaving Scott’s, and tears the hood from the man’s head. Unsurprisingly, it’s Stiles, bloody and teeth gnashing in rage. His eyes keep flickering from brown to orange, neck mottled with bruises under a thick iron chain. Paul tosses the hood on the ground and kicks at Stiles again, knocking him onto his stomach. His skin is completely covered in goosebumps, teeth chattering. Scott and Derek glance at him, at each other.

“Paul, please. You don’t know what you’re doing,” Scott tries, eyes wide and head franticly shaking. 

“It’s your choice, McCall,” Paul says, unbuttoning the holster and drawing out a gun unlike anything Allison has ever seen before. It’s long-barreled and old, much older than anything she’s ever handled. There are runes carved into its surface, and the handle is a cold, bone white. It makes her blood run cold and her teeth hurt.

The man who had been training his gun on Allison switches hands and is now pointing at Derek, hammer still cocked. The carelessness in his stance, the apathy in his face are familiar enough to her that she can recognize the hunter in him. She feels the shame settle in her throat.

“Scott,” Stiles mumbles, mouth full of dirt and blood. “Don’t you dare pick me over him, I swear to God. Don’t you fucking dare.”

Scott looks pained, face young in his fear. Allison hates that she feels so helpless, miles away from him and Stiles and a man with a gun. Paul cocks his gun, the handle beginning to ice over. He yanks Stiles head back by his hair and it’s then that Allison sees the trails of smoke coming from Stiles’ neck. The iron has been neutralizing him, but it’s starting to corrode under the heat of Stiles’ skin. In a handful of seconds, the chain links will disintegrate against his throat. She can almost see it happening now, Stiles’ body losing control of whatever is inside him. If it’s time he needs, she can give that to him. She’s inching back towards the treeline, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible as the tensions between Paul and Scott mount higher. Derek glances at her, confused until she motions at Stiles. He, too, can see the faint tendrils of smoke and the shaking of his body.

Taking a deep breath, she twists into Paul and tackles him into the long, jagged lines of the shadows beneath the branches of a willow tree. Dipping below its surface for a second, she drags herself back out of the nether space in the shadows until she’s springing out back into the clearing. She doesn’t have any weapons on her, so she fights with teeth and talons. She has him in her grip when she realizes that the clearing looks different here. She falls backwards, looking up around them.

“What the fuck,” Paul screams, teeth gnashing around a mouthful of blood. “What have you done?”

Allison gets up, shakily. She’s in her beta shift, limbs black and teeth pinprick sharp behind her lips. She can’t make it unslip from her arms and she begins to panic. Looking up, she sees mist swirling around the tree tops. She’s tackled to the ground, Paul’s hands around her throat. She tries to fight him off, claws around his wrists and snarling as she thrashes in his grip. She finally manages to swipe at the tender flesh of his under arm and he flinches back enough for her to start to scramble away. When he grabs at her legs with a weakened grip, she searches out any shadow around them. Anything, just the slightest outline of darkness would be enough she can feel it. She’s barely crawling towards the edge of one, the branch of a Juniper sapling, when the hands on her legs grow limp.

“No,” she hears Paul say, voice trembling.

Looking up she sees the glowing of dozens of eyes. Blue, orange, red: they all stare at her, unblinking. They grow brighter as they grow closer, mutilated bodies of dozens of werewolves becoming clear in the eerie, grey light of purgatory’s moon. Stomachs slashed, throats severed, some with arrows stabbed through them; wounds still hurting, bodies long since exsanguinated. A sharp, crippling fear trickles through her body like cold water as they reach her, still sprawled on the ground. They creep closer still, passing her without a second glance. It takes a moment for Allison to realize it’s not her they’re after.

“Stop,” Paul warbles. “Don’t touch me, filthy monsters. Get away—”

She ignores the sounds she hears next as best she can, keeps crawling forward until she reaches the edge of the dark. Slips into it without looking back.  
\---

When she emerges in the preserve, it’s dark out and bitterly cold. Snow’s collected in a melted slush on the forest floor and some of it swirls around through the branches of trees, mocking her. At least, it looks that way. She hikes to a cabin and plays the victim, asking for a phone. The old woman who lives there hands her a blanket and brings her to the kitchen, sits her in a chair that smells like cigarettes and bourbon. She gives her a mustard-yellow rotary phone and a concerned half-smile, and walks out to give Allison her privacy. Allison dials her dad first, gets the voicemail three times before she leaves a message. After she hangs up, she tries the only other number she knows and hopes it hasn’t changed.

“How long?” she asks Scott, when he brings her to his apartment to get cleaned up.

“A month,” he says, wiping blood off her legs. It’s not hers.

He’s careful, methodical with his hands. She feels safe like this, warm. It’s so different from what she wants, but it’s fulfilling nonetheless. She reminds herself he isn’t hers, either.

“I’m sorry,” she says. It’s empty and scared, but it feels like it needs saying. “I didn’t know.”

He folds on himself like a broken kite, sails torn and spars snapped. He rests his forehead on her knee like he belongs there, hides his face like she can’t smell the saltiness of his sadness. Scott’s always moving around her like he doesn’t know where else to go. Allison slides her fingers through his hair because she doesn’t know what else to say.

“Did you find her?” he asks after a while, looking up at her from the floor. “Did you see her?”

Allison shakes her head, letting it roll back to rest on the headboard of Scott’s Ikea bed. “Scott,” she says. Scott, Scott. Scott. His name tastes like salt. “C’mere.”

The mattress squeaks when Scott comes up to sit on the edge of the bed. He sits far enough away that she can see all of him. Scars and bruises, yellowing in the weeks since he must have first suffered them, grays peppered through the short hair he’s regrown on his head. She catalogues all that’s marked him, feels millions of years old and so very cold. She reaches for him, pulls him to her and then on top of her. She kisses him because she wants to, needs to feel like she’s really here. Anchored. She stays because otherwise, she feels like she’d float right into the shadows.

In the morning, the sofa-bed in the living room is made up and the coffee pot is full. Scott flips through a National Geographic and sips from a mug, fully dressed for the day.

“I called Lydia,” he tells her. “And Derek. Your dad. We’re meeting at Derek and Stiles’ in an hour.”

“What’s next?” Allison asks, pouring herself a cup of coffee. She leans against the counter and drinks her coffee. There are a million ways he could answer her and she feels ready for every single one.

Scott looks up at her, turns a page. “What do you want to happen?”

Allison thinks, nail scratching at a chip in the handle of her mug. She thinks of everything she hadn’t said to Scott, everything she had. She thinks about purgatory and time standing still.

“I want to go back,” she says, marks the set of Scott’s jaw and the way his eyes start to pinch in the corners. “I want to get Laura out.”

Relieved, he scoots back from the table. Hands clasped between his legs, he nods. His eyes look faraway and his body relaxes as he looks out at the wall. Nodding, he clears his throat and gets up to collect his keys from the bowl in the entry. 

“Then that’s what we’re gonna do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick forewarning to let you know there's no Laura in this one, but she's obviously coming back. Tags have been updated for new background relationships. There is also a smidge of Scallison in this chapter, but it's not going to be a full-fledged relationship and I promise the endgame will still be Allison/Laura.
> 
> Also, HAHAHA. This is going to be 3 chapters because I hate myself and had to rewrite this entire last part when my laptop crashed and died last year. I'm so sorry for the wait, but re-writing this whole thing meant the creative process has been a very. long. battle. The next update will definitely not take this long.
> 
> (Summary from Now, Now- "Wolf". Listen to it and other songs that inspired this fic on 8tracks.)  
> )

**Author's Note:**

> Fic title from Bloc Party's "Signs"; chapter titles from Ben Howard's "Gracious". Both songs are my heartsongs for Allison Argent.
> 
> To check out the mix CD I'd drop in Allison's locker for her and her hot girlfriend, Laura Hale, [check out the 8tracks mix I made](http://8tracks.com/anaisnt/undead-girlfriends)  
>  
> 
> Tumblr:  
> isntafan (fandom)  
> anaisnt (personal)


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